But why should we not regard the stability of intelligible things also
as a negation of movement? Because stability is not the privation of
movement; it does not begin to exist when movement ceases, and it does
not hinder it from simultaneous existence with it. In intelligible
being, stability does not imply the cessation of movement of that whose
nature it is to move.[430] On the contrary, so far as intelligible
being is contained in (or, expressed by) stability, it is stable;
so far as it moves, it will ever move; it is therefore stable by
stability, and movable by movement. The body, however, is no doubt
moved by movement, but it rests only in the absence of movement, when
it is deprived of the movement that it ought to have. Besides, what
would stability be supposed to imply (if it were supposed to exist
in sense-objects)? When somebody passes from sickness to health, he
enters on convalescence. What kind of stillness shall we oppose to
convalescence? Shall we oppose to it that condition from which that man
had just issued? That state was sickness, and not stability. Shall we
oppose to it the state in which that man has just entered? That state
is health, which is not identical with stability. To say that sickness
and health are each of them a sort of stability, is to consider
sickness and health as species of stability, which is absurd. Further,
if it were said that stability is an accident of health, it would
result that before stability health would not be health. As to such
arguments, let each reason according to his fancy!