 A different way to avoid the regress which plagues (4) would be to deny the assumption that anything that is matter-involving must be a compound of matter and form. Form is matter-involving, but that is not to say that it has its own form or essence and its own matter. Form and matter are introduced to explain certain facts about ordinary objects of perception, such as this man or this horse. Once those facts have been accounted for, there is no need to look for the same explanations of the theoretical entities which have been introduced to provide the original explanation. This way out of the regress involves denying that forms have essences, i.e., it reverts to position (3). This position faces a number of textual obstacles. For instance, at the beginning of De Anima i 1, Aristotle announces that “our aim is to grasp and understand [the soul’s] nature and essence, and secondly its properties” (402a7–8). In Metaphysics vii 11, he refers to the account (logos) of the essence (1037a22–3), and claims that “the account of the soul is [the account] of the man” (1037a28–9) (cf. also Physics ii 2, 194a13). For these textual reasons it would be preferable for a proponent of (3) to be able to say that forms do have essences or definitions in a sense, but they are identical with these (as snubness = concavity in a nose). Their essences are not some further thing, distinct from them.