Speaker 1
This being does not possess absolute essence, yet is the totality of the matter and qualities which constitutes the sense being, since we have said, that its hypostatic existence consists in the union of the things perceived by the senses, and that it is according to the testimony of their senses that men believe in the existence of things. Bodies are classifiable according to specific forms. The composition of the bodies being varied, they may also be classified according to the specific forms of the animals. Such for instance would be the specific form of a man united to a body. For this form is a quality of body, and it is reasonable to analyze it according to the qualities. If it should be objected that we have said above that some bodies are simple while others are composite, thus contrasting the simple and the composite, we shall answer that without regarding their composition we have also said that they are either brute or organized. The classification of bodies should not be founded on the contrast between the simple and the composite, but as we first did we may classify the simple bodies in the first rank. Then by considering their blendings, one may start from another principle to determine the differences offered by the composites under the respect of their figure or their location. Thus for instance, bodies might be classified in celestial and terrestrial. This may close our consideration of sense being or generation. Definition of quantity 11. It has now passed to quantity and quantity revs. When treating of quantity we have already said that it consists in number and dimension in so far as something possesses such a quantity, that is, in the number of material things and in the extension of the subject. Here indeed we are not treating of abstract quantity, but of a quantity which causes a piece of wood to measure three feet, or that horses are five in number. Consequently, as we have said we should call extension and number considered from the concrete viewpoint, quantitatives, but this name could be applied neither to time nor space, time being the measure of movement, reenters into relation, and place being that which contains the body consists of a manner of being and consequently in a relation. So much the less should we call time and place quantitatives as movement, though continuous, does not either belong to the genus of quantity. Large and small are conceptions belonging to quantity. Should large and small be classified within the genus of quantity? Yes, for the large is large by a certain dimension, and dimension is not a relation. As to greater and smaller, they belong to relation, for a thing is greater or smaller in relation to something else, just as when it is double.