in abstraction—namely, intelligible duration abstracted from body and its accidents—and they posited space (1) abstracted from body and its accidents.
Aristotle and his followers disagreed with their predecessors on this point. They did not posit any of these as separately existing; rather, they posited matter conjoined with form, universals conjoined with individual entities, and the ten intellects. As for the celestial soul, most of them regard it as a corporeal faculty, while some say that it is a self-subsisting substance like the human soul.
By the term “form,” they sometimes mean an accident, such as an artificial form—for example, the shape of a bed, a ring, or a sword. Such a form is an accident inhering in its substrate (2), whereas matter here is a self-subsisting substance. At other times, by form they mean natural form, and by matter, natural matter (3).
There is no doubt that animals, minerals, and plants (4) have forms and were created from materials. Yet by form [they mean] (5) a self-subsisting substance, and by matter another substance conjoined with that form.
Opposed to them are other speculative theologians who maintain the existence of the indivisible atom. They claim that, among things that come into being, the only ones whose coming into being is known through observation are accidents, and that they do not observe any substance coming into being.