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5. That which is accidental commonly implies that it can be lost by
some change of the thing to which it is an accident. For although some
accidents are said to be inseparable, which in Greek are called
akprista, as the color black is to the feather of a raven; yet the
feather loses that color, not indeed so long as it is a feather, but
because the feather is not always. Wherefore the matter itself is
changeable; and whenever that animal or that feather ceases to be, and
the whole of that body is changed and turned into earth, it loses
certainly that color also. Although the kind of accident which is
called separable may likewise be lost, not by separation, but by
change; as, for instance, blackness is called a separable accident to
the hair of men, because hair continuing to be hair can grow white;
yet, if carefully considered, it is sufficiently apparent, that it is
not as if anything departed by separation away from the head when it
grows white, as though blackness departed thence and went somewhere and
whiteness came in its place, but that the quality of color there is
turned and changed. Therefore there is nothing accidental in God,
because there is nothing changeable or that may be lost. But if you
choose to call that also accidental, which, although it may not be
lost, yet can be decreased or increased, as, for instance, the life
of the soul: for as long as it is a soul, so long it lives, and
because the soul is always, it always lives; but because it lives more
when it is wise, and less when it is foolish, here, too, some change
comes to pass, not such that life is absent, as wisdom is absent to
the foolish, but such that it is less; nothing of this kind, either,
happens to God, because He remains altogether unchangeable.
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