 (2) At Metaphysics XIII 4,1079a11–13, Aristotle briefly invokes the “Third Man” argument as a well-known problem for proponents of the theory of forms; already Plato, in the Parmenides (132a–133a), had raised the same issue. If the Form of Man not only fully expresses the characteristic of “what-it-is-to-be-a-man” (say “humanity”), but also is a perfect instance of that characteristic (i.e., the “Form-of-Man” is a man, more perfect than any physical man), then it would seem that there must be a resemblance between the Form of Man and the physical copy of that form (which, ex hypothesi, are both “men”). This requires the postulate of a “Third Man” by virtue of which it is possible to determine and predicate such resemblance. Syrianus points out correctly (In metaph. 111, 27–33) that this kind of argument could go on ad infinitum and then retorts (111, 33–112, 6) that it is a mistake to suppose that the predicate “man” is used in the same sense in the two cases: “If the point is that, because the Essential Man is synonymous with men in this realm, as Alexander states in his exegesis of this passage, and all synonyms come to be synonyms by virtue in their participation in some Form, a ‘third man’ will manifest itself as being predicated of both the Form and the things in this realm, then the argument becomes ridiculous; for it is not the case that the things in this realm are synonymous with the relevant Form” (111, 33–37; trans. Dillon/O’Meara). If that were the case, one should—absurdly—expect to find a liver, a spleen and each of the other internal organs present in the Form of Man, as Syrianus points out further down (113, 34f). In the end, Syrianus’ solution to the conundrum may not be entirely satisfactory, but it was by Syrianus’ time the standard one among Platonists. He does not deny self-predication, but he contends instead that the predication of “man” in the case of the Form and in the case of the natural human being, even if it involves homonymy, does so not in the usual sense, but “in the way that a model (paradeigma) is related to an image of itself, and specifically when the model generates the images in virtue of its essence, and causes them to revert to it” (115, 1–3). That is to say, the “Form of Man” is a man in the sense that it is productive of natural substances of a certain kind, i.e. human beings, which deserve the same predicate to the extent that they actively instantiate the essential characteristic of that form (i.e. ‘revert to it’).