Míguez
2. Porque es claro que la naturaleza no cuenta con manos, ni con pies, ni con instrumento alguno que le sea extraño o connatural. Necesita una materia sobre la que pueda actuar y a la cual tendrá que dar una forma. Todo ello resulta evidente. De la acción de la naturaleza habrá que excluir medios tales como la palanca; porque, ¿qué impulso o qué clase de palanca llegaría a producir la variedad de los colores y toda clase de formas? Tampoco los que trabajan la cera, a quienes dirigimos nuestra mirada presintiendo una relación de su arte con el de la naturaleza, pueden producir por sí mismos los colores, que sacan de otra parte para aplicar a los objetos que fabrican. Hemos de comprender, naturalmente, que si se da en ellos algo que permanece y según lo cual realizan los trabajos de sus manos, también tendrá que existir en la naturaleza algo fijo que no trabaje con las manos. Esta potencia de que hablamos ha de ser totalmente inmóvil. No necesitará, desde luego, de unas partes que sean inmóviles y de otras partes que se muevan, pues la materia es lo único que se mueve y esa potencia no puede concebirse como movida; si así fuese, no cabría considerarla como el primer motor. (Aclaremos que el primer motor no es la naturaleza, sino algo que permanece inmóvil en el universo.) Dícese que la razón es inmóvil, pero que la naturaleza nada tiene que ver con ella y que, por tanto, se mueve.
Y dícese también que toda ella se mueve, e igualmente la razón. Si se admite que tiene una parte inmóvil, esa parte habrá de ser una razón. Porque conviene que la naturaleza sea una forma y no algo compuesto de materia y de forma. ¿La imaginaríamos acaso con una materia cálida o fría? El sustrato, o materia trabajada por ella, ya viene con esas cualidades, y si realmente la materia no las posee, habrá de recibirlas bajo la influencia de una razón. Para que la materia se convierta en fuego, no se necesita que sea el fuego el que se acerque a ella, sino que lo haga la razón. Lo cual prueba, y no poco, que tanto en los animales como én las plantas son razones las que realmente actúan, debiendo considerar a la naturaleza como una razón que produce otra razón. Esta razón engendrada por ella da algo de sí misma al sustrato material, aunque ella misma permanezca inmóvil. Hay, pues, una razón que aparece en la forma visible, razón de ínfima calidad, sin vida e incapaz de producir ya cualquier otra razón; pariente de ella es también aquella razón que ha producido la forma y que dispone de la misma potencia, aplicada al ser engendrado.
Bouillet
II. Comment la Nature produit-elle, et comment, en produisant ainsi, arrive-t-elle à la contemplation ? Puisqu’elle produit en demeurant immobile en elle-même et qu’elle est une raison, elle est une contemplation. Toute action en effet est produite selon une raison, par conséquent en diffère. La raison assiste et préside à l’action, par conséquent n’est pas une action. Puisque la raison n’est pas une action, elle est une contemplation. Dans la Raison universelle, la raison qui tient le dernier rang procède elle-même de la contemplation, et mérite encore le nom .de contemplation en ce sens qu’elle est le produit de la contemplation [de l’Âme]. Quant à la Raison universelle, qui est supérieure à cette dernière raison, elle peut être considérée sous deux points de vue, comme Âme et comme Nature (09). [Commençons par la nature.]
La Raison considérée comme Nature dérive-t-elle aussi de la contemplation ? Oui, mais à la condition qu’elle se soit elle-même en quelque sorte contemplée : car elle est le produit d’une contemplation et d’un principe qui a contemplé. Comment se contemple-t-elle elle-même ? Elle n’a pas ce mode de contemplation qui procède de la raison [discursive], c’est-à-dire qui consiste à considérer discursivement ce qu’on a en soi. Comment se fait-il qu’étant une raison vivante, une puissance productrice, elle ne considère pas discursivement ce qu’elle a en elle ? C’est qu’on ne considère discursivement que ce qu’on ne possède pas encore (10). Or, comme la Nature possède, elle produit par cela même qu’elle possède. Être ce qu’elle est et produire ce qu’elle produit sont en elle une seule et même chose (11). Elle est contemplation et objet contemplé parce qu’elle est raison. Étant contemplation, objet contemplé et raison, elle produit par cela même qu’il est dans son essence d’être ces choses. L’action est donc évidemment, comme nous venons de le montrer, une contemplation : car elle est le résultat de la contemplation qui demeure immobile, qui ne fait rien que contempler et qui produit par cela seul qu’elle contemple.
Guthrie
NATURE ACTS ON MATTER NOT MECHANICALLY BUT BY ITS POTENCY.
2. Evidently nature possesses neither hands, nor feet, nor any natural or artificial instrument. For production its only need is a matter on which to work, and which it forms. The works of nature exclude all ideas of mechanical operation; not by any impelling force, nor by using levers nor machines does it produce varied colors, nor draw the outlines of objects. Even the workmen who form wax figures, to whose work the operations of nature are often compared, cannot endue objects with colors without borrowing them from elsewhere. Besides, we must observe that these workmen contain a power which remains immutable, and by the sole means of which they produce their works with their hands. Likewise, nature contains a power which remains immovable as a whole; it has no need of some parts that would remain immovable, and others that move. It is matter alone that undergoes movement, for the forming power is in no way moved. Were the forming power moved, it would no longer be the first motor; the first motor would no longer be nature, but whatever might, in its totality, be immovable.
NATURE IS IMMOVABLE AS A FORM, BUT NOT AS COMPOUND OF MATTER AND FORM.
It may be objected that the (”seminal) reason” may remain immutable, but that nature is distinct from reason, and is mutable. Considering the totality of nature, we include reason. Considering only one of its parts as immutable, this part still will be reason. Nature must be a form, and not a composite of matter and form. What need would it have of a matter that might be either cold or hot, since matter, when subjected to form, either possesses these qualities, or receives them, or rather undergoes the action of reason before having any qualities. Indeed, it is not by fire that matter becomes fire, but by reason. Consequently, in animals and plants, it is the “reasons” that produce; and nature is a reason that produces other reasons, imparting some of herself to the substance subjected to her influence, while remaining within herself. The reason that consists in a visible shape occupies the last rank; it is dead, and produces nothing. The living “reason” (which administers the body of the living being), being sister to the “reason” that produced the visible form (in begetting the body of the living being), and possessing the same power as this reason, alone produces within the begotten being.
Taylor
II. That nature then is not endued with hands and feet, nor any instrument either adventitious or allied to herself, but that matter is necessary, in which she operates, and which she reduces into form, is almost obvious to every one: nor is it to be thought that nature produces her work, as it were, by impelling and pressing; for what impulsion or pressure could effect various and omniform colours and figures? Since those who form images out of wax, and by beholding a pattern are supposed to operate similar to nature, could not produce colours, unless they procured these external to their work. It is therefore worth while to consider whether, as among operators of such arts, it is necessary something should remain within the soul, according to whose permanency they fabricate with their hands; in like manner there should be something of this kind in nature, which is a certain permanent power, fabricating without the ministry of hands, the whole of which is permanent and fixed; for it does not require some parts of itself to abide and others to be moved, for matter is that which is there moved, but of nature nothing is in motion, or that which moves will not be the first mover, and consequently will not be nature, but that which abides immoveable in the whole. But some one may object, that reason indeed remains immoveable, but that nature is different from reason and is moved; but if they speak of the whole of nature, this also will be reason, but if a part of it is immoveable this also shall be reason; for it is necessary that nature should be form, and not a composite from matter and form; for what need has nature of a cold or a hot matter? since matter, which is the subject of fabrication, brings these in its capacity, whether its nature is of this kind, or rather, previous to its assumption of quality, it is affected by reason: for it is not requisite that fire should approach, but reason, in order that matter may become fire, which is an evident argument that in animals and plants the seminal reasons are effective of all things, and that nature is reason, which generates another reason as its offspring, while it transmits something to its subject, abiding in the mean time permanent in itself. Reason, therefore, extrinsically produced according to visible form, is the last reason, generated, as it were, in the shade of the first, destitute of life, and incapable of forming another reason; but reason endued with life, and which is, as it were, the sister of that which fabricates form, and possessing the same power, generates that reason which is last in the effect.
MacKenna
2. There is, obviously, no question here of hands or feet, of any implement borrowed or inherent: Nature needs simply the Matter which it is to work upon and bring under Form; its productivity cannot depend upon mechanical operation. What driving or hoisting goes to produce all that variety of colour and pattern?
The wax-workers, whose methods have been cited as parallel to the creative act of Nature, are unable to make colours; all they can do to impose upon their handicraft colours taken from elsewhere. None the less there is a parallel which demands attention: in the case of workers in such arts there must be something locked within themselves, an efficacy not going out from them and yet guiding their hands in all their creation; and this observation should have indicated a similar phenomenon in Nature; it should be clear that this indwelling efficacy, which makes without hands, must exist in Nature, no less than in the craftsman — but, there, as a thing completely inbound. Nature need possess no outgoing force as against that remaining within; the only moved thing is Matter; there can be no moved phase in this Nature-Principle; any such moved phase could not be the primal mover; this Nature-Principle is no such moved entity; it is the unmoved Principle operating in the Kosmos.
We may be answered that the Reason-Principle is, no doubt, unmoved, but that the Nature-Principle, another being, operates by motion.
But, if Nature entire is in question here, it is identical with the Reason-Principle; and any part of it that is unmoved is the Reason-Principle. The Nature-Principle must be an Ideal-Form, not a compound of Form and Matter; there is no need for it to possess Matter, hot and cold: the Matter that underlies it, on which it exercises its creative act, brings all that with it, or, natively without quality, becomes hot and cold, and all the rest, when brought under Reason: Matter, to become fire, demands the approach not of fire but of a Reason-Principle.
This is no slight evidence that in the animal and vegetable realms the Reason-Principles are the makers and that Nature is a Reason-Principle producing a second Reason-Principle, its offspring, which, in turn, while itself, still, remaining intact, communicates something to the underlie, Matter.
The Reason-Principle presiding over visible Shape is the very ultimate of its order, a dead thing unable to produce further: that which produces in the created realm is the living Reason-Principle — brother no doubt, to that which gives mere shape, but having life-giving power.