LXII. Aristotle however, did no more than assign false or uncertain qualities to his four elements, and left untouched, substantial nature which is the root of them; and those who succeeded him in all after-ages, if they aimed at more, attained no more. The sectaries of Aristotle content themselves with saying of the elements, what they say of all other natural compositions; that is, that they are constituted of matter in physical forms, are real incompleat entities, and evidently distinct from each other. By all which, admitting this description to be right, they teach us nothing, till they explain to us, of what the physical form consists, and what is the specific nature of the physical form, in every natural composition. But their system explained in the general way, in which they themselves define it, is strongly combated by the modern philosophers, who find an insurmountable difficulty in the generation of the material forms, not being able to comprehend, how their production can be any thing else but a new creation; for the arguments the Aristotelites fly to, of deducing them from the power of the matter, contain nothing but words, void of all real signification; and truly Aristotle himself having said, that the form is one of the principles of a natural entity, and that the principles are those things, which are neither made from their own substance, nor from that of any other entity whatever, shew them to be words which have no fixed meaning: _Quæ nec ex se, nec ex aliis, sed ex quibus omnia fiunt_; how then can we reconcile this doctrine, with the form being made of the matter? SECT. XV.