130 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



and substance, by impressing motion on matter, and 

 begetting a change therein which rouses its latent 

 powers to action. In this way of thinking the 

 function of the Agent is only to make active that 

 which already existed potentially, and to realise a 

 union between matter and form. Thus all creation 

 is reduced to motion of which heat is the principle. 

 This heat, shed abroad in the waters and in the 

 earth, begets both the animals and the plants 

 which are not produced by seed. Nature puts forth 

 all these both orderly and with perfection, just as 

 if guided by a controlling mind ; though nature 

 itself has no intelligence. The proportions and 

 productive power which the elements owe to the 

 motion of the sun and stars are what Plato called 

 by the name of Ideas. According to Aristotle the 

 Agent cannot create forms, for in that case some- 

 thing would be produced from nothing. 



' It is, in fact, the notion that forms could be 

 created which has led some philosophers to suppose 

 that forms have a substantive existence of their 

 own, and that there is a separate source of these. 

 The same error has infected all the three religions 

 of our day, 1 leading their divines to assert that 

 nothing can produce something. Starting from 

 this principle our theologians have supposed the 

 existence of one Agent producing without inter- 

 mediary all kinds of creatures ; an Agent whose 

 action proceeds by an infinity of opposite and con- 

 tradictory acts done simultaneously. In this way 

 of thinking it is not fire that burns, nor water that 

 moistens ; all proceeds by a direct act of the 



1 This is a notable saying which may well have given rise to the 

 legend of a book De Tribus Impostoribus. It was certainly one of the 

 foeda dicta blamed by Albertus Magnus. 



