8. It may still be objected that it is not matter that makes us wicked;
for it is not matter that produces ignorance and perverted appetites.
If, indeed, these appetites mislead us to evil as a result of the
perversity of the body, we must seek its cause, not in matter, but in
form (in the qualities of the bodies). These, for instance, are heat,
cold, bitterness, pungency, and the other qualities of the bodily
secretions; or, the atonic condition or inflammation of certain organs;
or, certain dispositions which produce the difference of appetites;
and, if you please, false opinions. Evil, therefore, is form rather
than matter. Even under this (mistaken) hypothesis we are none the
less driven to acknowledge that matter is the evil. A quality does not
always produce the same results within or outside of matter; thus the
form of the axe without iron does not cut. The forms that inhere in
matter are not always what they would be if they were outside of it.
The ("seminal) reasons" when inhering in matter are by it corrupted
and filled with its nature. As fire, when separate from matter, does
not burn; so form, when remaining by itself, effects what it would if
it were in matter. Matter dominates any principle that appears within
it, alters it, and corrupts it by imparting thereto its own nature,
which is contrary to the Good. It does not indeed substitute cold
for heat, but it adds to the form--as, for instance, to the form of
fire--its formless substance; to figure adding its shapelessness; to
measure, its excess and lack, proceeding thus until it has degraded
things, transubstantiating them into its own nature. That is the reason
that, in the nutrition of animals, what has been ingested does not
remain what it was before. The foods that enter into the body of a dog,
for instance, are by assimilation transformed into blood and canine
secretions, and, in general, are transformed according to the animal
that receives them. Thus even under the hypothesis that evils are
referred to the body, matter is the cause of evils.