and wood is the matter, while the shape of the bed, the door, and the like is the form impressed upon it; or iron is the matter, and the shape of the sword or whatever else is made from it is the form impressed upon it, and so forth. In every such case this artificial form is nothing but an accident inhering in a substance—that is, the particular composition and distinctive shape. The form here is not a substance existing independently, and this is obvious both to sense and to reason.

Accordingly, when they say that matter and form are two causes of the composite, and that they are likewise two causes of the essence—just as the agent and the end are two causes for its actual existence—what this comes down to is that the bodies in which this accident inheres are composed of a subject and an attribute, and that the subject together with its attribute are two causes for the essence of that subject. It is also known that this essence is first conceived in the mind and then exists externally: its mental existence is its mental essence, and its external existence is its external essence. Hence, so long as it has not come to exist outside the mind there is nothing external at all—neither cause nor effect. And when it is conceived in the intellect or brought into external being, it is simply a subject in which an attribute resides; nothing else is present besides the subject and the attribute such that the two could be causes for it. Rather, what was earlier described as the cause—namely, the matter and its form—is the very effect itself, and the effect itself is identical with the cause. Reflect on this carefully.

For their assertion that matter and form are two causes of the essence, the reality, and so forth, gives the false impression that in the external world there is an essence other than matter and form, and that matter and form are causes of that separate essence. All of this is a corrupt imagining. Externally there is nothing but the existent entity itself—the coin or the ring, i.e., silver endowed with a particular shape. Outside of that there is nothing: no separate essence, no abstract existence, nothing whatsoever. And even were one to posit an essence other than this existent, it would be nothing but the subject together with the attribute inhering in it; and if one were to suppose that matter and form are something other than the subject and the attribute, still there would be no essence apart from matter and form for the two to be causes of something other than themselves. These, then, are three distinct stations.