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    "slug": "ennead-2",
    "name": "Ennead II — The Physical Cosmos"
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      "slug": "plotinus-enneads",
      "name": "Enneads",
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 4,
    "slug": "4-matter-in-its-two-kinds",
    "title": "II.4 — On Matter",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 6260,
    "text": "## FOURTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### FOURTH TRACTATE.\n\nMATTER IN ITS TWO KINDS.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. By common agreement of all that have arrived at the\nconception of such a Kind, what is known as Matter is\nunderstood to be\na certain base, a recipient of Form-Ideas. Thus far all go the same\nway. But departure begins with the attempt to establish what this\nbasic Kind is in itself, and how it is a recipient and of what.\n\nTo a certain school, body-forms exclusively are the Real Beings;\nexistence is limited to bodies; there is one only Matter, the stuff\nunderlying the primal-constituents of the Universe: existence is\nnothing but this Matter: everything is some modification of this;\nthe elements of the Universe are simply this Matter in a certain\ncondition.\n\nThe school has even the audacity to foist Matter upon the divine\nbeings so that, finally, God himself becomes a mode of Matter- and\nthis though they make it corporeal, describing it as a body void of\nquality, but a magnitude.\n\nAnother school makes it incorporeal: among these, not\nall hold the\ntheory of one only Matter; some of them while they maintain the one\nMatter, in which the first school believes, the foundation of bodily\nforms, admit another, a prior, existing in the\ndivine-sphere, the base\nof the Ideas there and of the unembodied Beings.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. We are obliged, therefore, at the start, both to establish\nthe existence of this other Kind and to examine its nature and the\nmode of its Being.\n\nNow if Matter must characteristically be undetermined, void of\nshape, while in that sphere of the Highest there can be nothing that\nlacks determination, nothing shapeless, there can be no Matter\nthere. Further, if all that order is simplex, there can be no need\nof Matter, whose function is to join with some other element\nto form a\ncompound: it will be found of necessity in things of derived\nexistence\nand shifting nature- the signs which lead us to the notion of\nMatter- but it is unnecessary to the primal.\n\nAnd again, where could it have come from? whence did it take its\nbeing? If it is derived, it has a source: if it is eternal, then the\nPrimal-Principles are more numerous than we thought, the Firsts are\na meeting-ground. Lastly, if that Matter has been entered by\nIdea, the\nunion constitutes a body; and, so, there is Body in the Supreme.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. Now it may be observed, first of all, that we cannot hold\nutterly cheap either the indeterminate, or even a Kind whose\nvery idea\nimplies absence of form, provided only that it offer itself to its\nPriors and [through them] to the Highest Beings. We have the\nparallel of the Soul itself in its relation to the\nIntellectual-Principle and the Divine Reason, taking shape by these\nand led so to a nobler principle of form.\n\nFurther, a compound in the Intellectual order is not to be\nconfounded with a compound in the realm of Matter; the Divine\nReasons are compounds and their Act is to produce a compound, namely\nthat [lower] Nature which works towards Idea. And there is not only\na difference of function; there is a still more notable difference\nof source. Then, too, the Matter of the realm of process ceaselessly\nchanges its form: in the eternal, Matter is immutably one and the\nsame, so that the two are diametrically opposites. The Matter of\nthis realm is all things in turn, a new entity in every\nseparate case,\nso that nothing is permanent and one thing ceaselessly pushes\nanother out of being: Matter has no identity here. In the\nIntellectual\nit is all things at once: and therefore has nothing to\nchange into: it\nalready and ever contains all. This means that not even in its own\nSphere is the Matter there at any moment shapeless: no doubt that is\ntrue of the Matter here as well; but shape is held by a very\ndifferent\nright in the two orders of Matter.\n\nAs to whether Matter is eternal or a thing of process, this will\nbe clear when we are sure of its precise nature.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. The present existence of the Ideal-Forms has been\ndemonstrated elsewhere: we take up our argument from that point.\n\nIf, then, there is more than one of such forming Ideas,\nthere must\nof necessity be some character common to all and equally\nsome peculiar\ncharacter in each keeping them distinct.\n\nThis peculiar characteristic, this distinguishing difference, is\nthe individual shape. But if shape, then there is the shaped, that\nin which the difference is lodged.\n\nThere is, therefore, a Matter accepting the shape, a permanent\nsubstratum.\n\nFurther, admitting that there is an Intelligible Realm beyond,\nof which this world is an image, then, since this world-compound is\nbased on Matter, there must be Matter there also.\n\nAnd how can you predicate an ordered system without thinking of\nform, and how think of form apart from the notion of something in\nwhich the form is lodged?\n\nNo doubt that Realm is, in the strict fact, utterly\nwithout parts,\nbut in some sense there is part there too. And in so far as these\nparts are really separate from each other, any such division and\ndifference can be no other than a condition of Matter, of a\nsomething divided and differentiated: in so far as that realm,\nthough without parts, yet consists of a variety of entities, these\ndiverse entities, residing in a unity of which they are variations,\nreside in a Matter; for this unity, since it is also a\ndiversity, must\nbe conceived of as varied and multiform; it must have been shapeless\nbefore it took the form in which variation occurs. For if we\nabstract from the Intellectual-Principle the variety and the\nparticular shapes, the Reason-Principles and the Thoughts, what\nprecedes these was something shapeless and undetermined, nothing of\nwhat is actually present there.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. It may be objected that the Intellectual-Principle possesses\nits content in an eternal conjunction so that the two make a perfect\nunity, and that thus there is no Matter there.\n\nBut that argument would equally cancel the Matter present in the\nbodily forms of this realm: body without shape has never existed,\nalways body achieved and yet always the two constituents. We\ndiscover these two- Matter and Idea- by sheer force of our reasoning\nwhich distinguishes continually in pursuit of the simplex, the\nirreducible, working on, until it can go no further, towards the\nultimate in the subject of enquiry. And the ultimate of every\npartial-thing is its Matter, which, therefore, must be all darkness\nsince light is a Reason-Principle. The Mind, too, as also a\nReason-Principle, sees only in each particular object the\nReason-Principle lodging there; anything lying below that it\ndeclares to lie below the light, to be therefore a thing of\ndarkness, just as the eye, a thing of light, seeks light and colours\nwhich are modes of light, and dismisses all that is below the\ncolours and hidden by them, as belonging to the order of the\ndarkness,\nwhich is the order of Matter.\n\nThe dark element in the Intelligible, however, differs from that\nin the sense-world: so therefore does the Matter- as much as the\nforming-Idea presiding in each of the two realms. The Divine Matter,\nthough it is the object of determination has, of its own nature, a\nlife defined and intellectual; the Matter of this sphere\nwhile it does\naccept determination is not living or intellective, but a dead thing\ndecorated: any shape it takes is an image, exactly as the Base is an\nimage. There on the contrary the shape is a real-existent as is the\nBase. Those that ascribe Real Being to Matter must be admitted to be\nright as long as they keep to the Matter of the Intelligible Realm:\nfor the Base there is Being, or even, taken as an entirety with the\nhigher that accompanies it, is illuminated Being.\n\nBut does this Base, of the Intellectual Realm, possess eternal\nexistence?\n\nThe solution of that question is the same as for the Ideas.\n\nBoth are engendered, in the sense that they have had a\nbeginning, but unengendered in that this beginning is not in Time:\nthey have a derived being but by an eternal derivation: they are\nnot, like the Kosmos, always in process but, in the character of the\nSupernal, have their Being permanently. For that differentiation\nwithin the Intelligible which produces Matter has always existed and\nit is this cleavage which produces the Matter there: it is the first\nmovement; and movement and differentiation are convertible\nterms since\nthe two things arose as one: this motion, this cleavage,\naway from the\nfirst is indetermination [= Matter], needing The First to its\ndetermination which it achieves by its Return, remaining, until\nthen, an Alienism, still lacking good; unlit by the Supernal. It is\nfrom the Divine that all light comes, and, until this be absorbed,\nno light in any recipient of light can be authentic; any light from\nelsewhere is of another order than the true.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. We are led thus to the question of receptivity in things of\nbody.\n\nAn additional proof that bodies must have some substratum\ndifferent from themselves is found in the changing of the\nbasic-constituents into one another. Notice that the destruction of\nthe elements passing over is not complete- if it were we would have\na Principle of Being wrecked in Non-being- nor does an engendered\nthing pass from utter non-being into Being: what happens is\nthat a new\nform takes the place of an old. There is, then, a stable\nelement, that\nwhich puts off one form to receive the form of the incoming entity.\n\nThe same fact is clearly established by decay, a process\nimplying a compound object; where there is decay there is a\ndistinction between Matter and Form.\n\nAnd the reasoning which shows the destructible to be a\ncompound is\nborne out by practical examples of reduction: a drinking vessel is\nreduced to its gold, the gold to liquid; analogy forces us to\nbelieve that the liquid too is reducible.\n\nThe basic-constituents of things must be either their\nForm-Idea or\nthat Primal Matter [of the Intelligible] or a compound of\nthe Form and\nMatter.\n\nForm-Idea, pure and simple, they cannot be: for without\nMatter how\ncould things stand in their mass and magnitude?\n\nNeither can they be that Primal Matter, for they are not\nindestructible.\n\nThey must, therefore, consist of Matter and Form-Idea- Form for\nquality and shape, Matter for the base, indeterminate as being other\nthan Idea.\n\n\n## Section 7\n\n\n##### Section 7\n\n7. Empedokles in identifying his \"elements\" with Matter\nis refuted\nby their decay.\n\nAnaxagoras, in identifying his \"primal-combination\" with Matter-\nto which he allots no mere aptness to any and every nature or\nquality but the effective possession of all- withdraws in\nthis way the\nvery Intellectual-Principle he had introduced; for this Mind\nis not to\nhim the bestower of shape, of Forming Idea; and it is co-aeval with\nMatter, not its prior. But this simultaneous existence is\nimpossible: for if the combination derives Being by participation,\nBeing is the prior; if both are Authentic Existents, then an\nadditional Principle, a third, is imperative [a ground of\nunification]. And if this Creator, Mind, must pre-exist, why need\nMatter contain the Forming-Ideas parcel-wise for the Mind, with\nunending labour, to assort and allot? Surely the\nundetermined could be\nbrought to quality and pattern in the one comprehensive act?\n\nAs for the notion that all is in all, this clearly is impossible.\n\nThose who make the base to be \"the infinite\" must define\nthe term.\n\nIf this \"infinite\" means \"of endless extension\" there is no\ninfinite among beings; there is neither an infinity-in-itself\n[Infinity Abstract] nor an infinity as an attribute to some body;\nfor in the first case every part of that infinity would be infinite\nand in the second an object in which the infinity was present as an\nattribute could not be infinite apart from that attribute, could not\nbe simplex, could not therefore be Matter.\n\nAtoms again cannot meet the need of a base.\n\nThere are no atoms; all body is divisible endlessly: besides\nneither the continuity nor the ductility of corporeal things is\nexplicable apart from Mind, or apart from the Soul which cannot be\nmade up of atoms; and, again, out of atoms creation could produce\nnothing but atoms: a creative power could produce nothing from a\nmaterial devoid of continuity. Any number of reasons might\nbe brought,\nand have been brought, against this hypothesis and it need detain us\nno longer.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. What, then, is this Kind, this Matter, described as one\nstuff, continuous and without quality?\n\nClearly since it is without quality it is incorporeal;\nbodiliness would be quality.\n\nIt must be the basic stuff of all the entities of the\nsense-world and not merely base to some while being to\nothers achieved\nform.\n\nClay, for example, is matter to the potter but is not Matter\npure and simple. Nothing of this sort is our object: we are seeking\nthe stuff which underlies all alike. We must therefore refuse to it\nall that we find in things of sense- not merely such attributes as\ncolour, heat or cold, but weight or weightlessness, thickness or\nthinness, shape and therefore magnitude; though notice that to be\npresent within magnitude and shape is very different from possessing\nthese qualities.\n\nIt cannot be a compound, it must be a simplex, one distinct\nthing in its nature; only so can it be void of all quality. The\nPrinciple which gives it form gives this as something alien: so with\nmagnitude and all really-existent things bestowed upon it. If, for\nexample, it possessed a magnitude of its own, the Principle giving\nit form would be at the mercy of that magnitude and must produce not\nat will, but only within the limit of the Matter's capacity: to\nimagine that Will keeping step with its material is fantastic.\n\nThe Matter must be of later origin than the forming-power, and\ntherefore must be at its disposition throughout, ready to become\nanything, ready therefore to any bulk; besides, if it possessed\nmagnitude, it would necessarily possess shape also: it would\nbe doubly\ninductile.\n\nNo: all that ever appears upon it is brought in by the Idea: the\nIdea alone possesses: to it belongs the magnitude and all else that\ngoes with the Reason-Principle or follows upon it. Quantity is given\nwith the Ideal-Form in all the particular species- man, bird, and\nparticular kind of bird.\n\nThe imaging of Quantity upon Matter by an outside power is not\nmore surprising than the imaging of Quality; Quality is no doubt a\nReason-Principle, but Quantity also- being measure, number-\nis equally\nso.\n\n\n## Section 9\n\n\n##### Section 9\n\n9. But how can we conceive a thing having existence\nwithout having\nmagnitude?\n\nWe have only to think of things whose identity does not depend\non their quantity- for certainly magnitude can be distinguished from\nexistence as can many other forms and attributes.\n\nIn a word, every unembodied Kind must be classed as without\nquantity, and Matter is unembodied.\n\nBesides quantitativeness itself [the Absolute-Principle] does\nnot possess quantity, which belongs only to things participating in\nit, a consideration which shows that Quantitativeness is an\nIdea-Principle. A white object becomes white by the presence of\nwhiteness; what makes an organism white or of any other variety of\ncolour is not itself a specific colour but, so to speak, a specific\nReason-Principle: in the same way what gives an organism a certain\nbulk is not itself a thing of magnitude but is Magnitude itself, the\nabstract Absolute, or the Reason-Principle.\n\nThis Magnitude-Absolute, then, enters and beats the Matter out\ninto Magnitude?\n\nNot at all: the Matter was not previously shrunken small: there\nwas no littleness or bigness: the Idea gives Magnitude exactly as it\ngives every quality not previously present.\n\n\n## Section 10\n\n\n##### Section 10\n\n10. But how can I form the conception of the sizelessness of\nMatter?\n\nHow do you form the concept of any absence of quality?\nWhat is the\nAct of the Intellect, what is the mental approach, in such a case?\n\nThe secret is Indetermination.\n\nLikeness knows its like: the indeterminate knows the\nindeterminate. Around this indefinite a definite conception will be\nrealized, but the way lies through indefiniteness.\n\nAll knowledge comes by Reason and the Intellectual Act; in this\ncase Reason conveys information in any account it gives, but the act\nwhich aims at being intellectual is, here, not intellection\nbut rather\nits failure: therefore the representation of Matter must be\nspurious, unreal, something sprung of the Alien, of the unreal, and\nbound up with the alien reason.\n\nThis is Plato's meaning where he says that Matter is apprehended\nby a sort of spurious reasoning.\n\nWhat, then, is this indetermination in the Soul? Does it\namount to\nan utter absence of Knowledge, as if the Soul or Mind had withdrawn?\n\nNo: the indeterminate has some footing in the sphere of\naffirmation. The eye is aware of darkness as a base capable of\nreceiving any colour not yet seen against it: so the Mind, putting\naside all attributes perceptible to sense- all that corresponds to\nlight- comes upon a residuum which it cannot bring under\ndetermination: it is thus in the state of the eye which,\nwhen directed\ntowards darkness, has become in some way identical with the object\nof its spurious vision.\n\nThere is vision, then, in this approach of the Mind towards\nMatter?\n\nSome vision, yes; of shapelessness, of colourlessness, of the\nunlit, and therefore of the sizeless. More than this would mean that\nthe Soul is already bestowing Form.\n\nBut is not such a void precisely what the Soul\nexperiences when it\nhas no intellection whatever?\n\nNo: in that case it affirms nothing, or rather has no\nexperience: but in knowing Matter, it has an experience, what may be\ndescribed as the impact of the shapeless; for in its very\nconsciousness of objects that have taken shape and size it knows\nthem as compounds [i.e., as possessing with these forms a formless\nbase] for they appear as things that have accepted colour and other\nquality.\n\nIt knows, therefore, a whole which includes two\ncomponents; it has\na clear Knowledge or perception of the overlie [the Ideas] but only\na dim awareness of the underlie, the shapeless which is not an\nIdeal-Principle.\n\nWith what is perceptible to it there is presented something\nelse: what it can directly apprehend it sets on one side as its own;\nbut the something else which Reason rejects, this, the dim, it knows\ndimly, this, the dark, it knows darkly, this it knows in a sort of\nnon-knowing.\n\nAnd just as even Matter itself is not stably shapeless but, in\nthings, is always shaped, the Soul also is eager to throw over it\nthe thing-form; for the Soul recoils from the indefinite, dreads,\nalmost, to be outside of reality, does not endure to linger about\nNon-Being.\n\n\n## Section 11\n\n\n##### Section 11\n\n11. \"But, given Magnitude and the properties we know, what else\ncan be necessary to the existence of body?\"\n\nSome base to be the container of all the rest.\n\n\"A certain mass then; and if mass, then Magnitude? Obviously if\nyour Base has no Magnitude it offers no footing to any entrant. And\nsuppose it sizeless; then, what end does it serve? It never helped\nIdea or quality; now it ceases to account for differentiation or for\nmagnitude, though the last, wheresoever it resides, seems to find\nits way into embodied entities by way of Matter.\"\n\n\"Or, taking a larger view, observe that actions, productive\noperations, periods of time, movements, none of these have any such\nsubstratum and yet are real things; in the same way the most\nelementary body has no need of Matter; things may be, all, what they\nare, each after its own kind, in their great variety, deriving the\ncoherence of their being from the blending of the various\nIdeal-Forms.\nThis Matter with its sizelessness seems, then, to be a name without\na content.\"\n\nNow, to begin with: extension is not an imperative condition of\nbeing a recipient; it is necessary only where it happens to be a\nproperty inherent to the recipient's peculiar mode of being.\nThe Soul,\nfor example, contains all things but holds them all in an unextended\nunity; if magnitude were one of its attributes it would\ncontain things\nin extension. Matter does actually contain in spatial extension what\nit takes in; but this is because itself is a potential recipient of\nspatial extension: animals and plants, in the same way, as they\nincrease in size, take quality in parallel development with\nquantity, and they lose in the one as the other lessens.\n\nNo doubt in the case of things as we know them there is a\ncertain mass lying ready beforehand to the shaping power: but that\nis no reason for expecting bulk in Matter strictly so called; for in\nsuch cases Matter is not the absolute; it is that of some definite\nobject; the Absolute Matter must take its magnitude, as every other\nproperty, from outside itself.\n\nA thing then need not have magnitude in order to receive form:\nit may receive mass with everything else that comes to it at the\nmoment of becoming what it is to be: a phantasm of mass is enough, a\nprimary aptness for extension, a magnitude of no content- whence the\nidentification that has been made of Matter with The Void.\n\nBut I prefer to use the word phantasm as hinting the\nindefiniteness into which the Soul spills itself when it seeks to\ncommunicate with Matter, finding no possibility of delimiting it,\nneither encompassing it nor able to penetrate to any fixed point of\nit, either of which achievements would be an act of delimitation.\n\nIn other words, we have something which is to be described not\nas small or great but as the great-and-small: for it is at\nonce a mass\nand a thing without magnitude, in the sense that it is the Matter on\nwhich Mass is based and that, as it changes from great to small and\nsmall to great, it traverses magnitude. Its very undeterminateness\nis a mass in the same sense that of being a recipient of Magnitude-\nthough of course only in the visible object.\n\nIn the order of things without Mass, all that is Ideal-Principle\npossesses delimitation, each entity for itself, so that the\nconception\nof Mass has no place in them: Matter, not delimited, having\nin its own\nnature no stability, swept into any or every form by turns, ready to\ngo here, there and everywhere, becomes a thing of\nmultiplicity: driven\ninto all shapes, becoming all things, it has that much of the\ncharacter of mass.\n\n\n## Section 12\n\n\n##### Section 12\n\n12. It is the corporeal, then, that demands magnitude: the\nIdeal-Forms of body are Ideas installed in Mass.\n\nBut these Ideas enter, not into Magnitude itself but into some\nsubject that has been brought to Magnitude. For to suppose them\nentering into Magnitude and not into Matter- is to represent them as\nbeing either without Magnitude and without Real-Existence [and\ntherefore undistinguishable from the Matter] or not Ideal-Forms [apt\nto body] but Reason-Principles [utterly removed] whose sphere could\nonly be Soul; at this, there would be no such thing as body [i.e.,\ninstead of Ideal-Forms shaping Matter and so producing body, there\nwould be merely Reason-Principles dwelling remote in Soul.]\n\nThe multiplicity here must be based upon some unity which, since\nit has been brought to Magnitude, must be, itself, distinct from\nMagnitude. Matter is the base of Identity to all that is composite:\nonce each of the constituents comes bringing its own Matter with it,\nthere is no need of any other base. No doubt there must be a\ncontainer, as it were a place, to receive what is to enter,\nbut Matter\nand even body precede place and space; the primal necessity, in\norder to the existence of body, is Matter.\n\nThere is no force in the suggestion that, since\nproduction and act\nare immaterial, corporeal entities also must be immaterial.\n\nBodies are compound, actions not. Further, Matter does in some\nsense underlie action; it supplies the substratum to the doer: it is\npermanently within him though it does not enter as a constituent\ninto the act where, indeed, it would be a hindrance. Doubtless, one\nact does not change into another- as would be the case if\nthere were a\nspecific Matter of actions- but the doer directs himself from one\nact to another so that he is the Matter, himself, to his varying\nactions.\n\nMatter, in sum, is necessary to quality and to quantity, and,\ntherefore, to body.\n\nIt is, thus, no name void of content; we know there is such a\nbase, invisible and without bulk though it be.\n\nIf we reject it, we must by the same reasoning reject qualities\nand mass: for quality, or mass, or any such entity, taken by itself\napart, might be said not to exist. But these do exist, though in an\nobscure existence: there is much less ground for rejecting Matter,\nhowever it lurk, discerned by none of the senses.\n\nIt eludes the eye, for it is utterly outside of colour: it is\nnot heard, for it is no sound: it is no flavour or savour\nfor nostrils\nor palate: can it, perhaps, be known to touch? No: for neither is it\ncorporeal; and touch deals with body, which is known by being solid,\nfragile, soft, hard, moist, dry- all properties utterly lacking in\nMatter.\n\nIt is grasped only by a mental process, though that not an act\nof the intellective mind but a reasoning that finds no\nsubject; and so\nit stands revealed as the spurious thing it has been called. No\nbodiliness belongs to it; bodiliness is itself a phase of\nReason-Principle and so is something different from Matter,\nas Matter,\ntherefore, from it: bodiliness already operative and so to speak\nmade concrete would be body manifest and not Matter unelaborated.\n\n\n## Section 13\n\n\n##### Section 13\n\n13. Are we asked to accept as the substratum some attribute or\nquality present to all the elements in common?\n\nThen, first, we must be told what precise attribute this is and,\nnext, how an attribute can be a substratum.\n\nThe elements are sizeless, and how conceive an attribute where\nthere is neither base nor bulk?\n\nAgain, if the quality possesses determination, it is not Matter\nthe undetermined; and anything without determination is not a\nquality but is the substratum- the very Matter we are seeking.\n\nIt may be suggested that perhaps this absence of quality means\nsimply that, of its own nature, it has no participation in any of\nthe set and familiar properties, but takes quality by this very\nnon-participation, holding thus an absolutely individual character,\nmarked off from everything else, being as it were the negation of\nthose others. Deprivation, we will be told, comports quality: a\nblind man has the quality of his lack of sight. If then- it will be\nurged- Matter exhibits such a negation, surely it has a quality, all\nthe more so, assuming any deprivation to be a quality, in that here\nthe deprivation is all comprehensive.\n\nBut this notion reduces all existence to qualified things or\nqualities: Quantity itself becomes a Quality and so does even\nExistence. Now this cannot be: if such things as Quantity and\nExistence are qualified, they are, by that very fact, not qualities:\nQuality is an addition to them; we must not commit the absurdity of\ngiving the name Quality to something distinguishable from Quality,\nsomething therefore that is not Quality.\n\nIs it suggested that its mere Alienism is a quality in Matter?\n\nIf this Alienism is difference-absolute [the abstract entity] it\npossesses no Quality: absolute Quality cannot be itself a qualified\nthing.\n\nIf the Alienism is to be understood as meaning only that\nMatter is\ndifferentiated, then it is different not by itself [since it is\ncertainly not an absolute] but by this Difference, just as all\nidentical objects are so by virtue of Identicalness [the Absolute\nprinciple of Identity].\n\nAn absence is neither a Quality nor a qualified entity; it is\nthe negation of a Quality or of something else, as noiselessness is\nthe negation of noise and so on. A lack is negative; Quality demands\nsomething positive. The distinctive character of Matter is unshape,\nthe lack of qualification and of form; surely then it is absurd to\npretend that it has Quality in not being qualified; that is like\nsaying that sizelessness constitutes a certain size.\n\nThe distinctive character of Matter, then, is simply its\nmanner of\nbeing- not something definite inserted in it but, rather a relation\ntowards other things, the relation of being distinct from them.\n\nOther things possess something besides this relation of\nAlienism: their form makes each an entity. Matter may with propriety\nbe described as merely alien; perhaps, even, we might describe it as\n\"The Aliens,\" for the singular suggests a certain definiteness while\nthe plural would indicate the absence of any determination.\n\n\n## Section 14\n\n\n##### Section 14\n\n14. But is Absence this privation itself, or something in which\nthis Privation is lodged?\n\nAnyone maintaining that Matter and Privation are one and the\nsame in substratum but stand separable in reason cannot be excused\nfrom assigning to each the precise principle which\ndistinguishes it in\nreason from the other: that which defines Matter must be kept quite\napart from that defining the Privation and vice versa.\n\nThere are three possibilities: Matter is not in Privation and\nPrivation is not in Matter; or each is in each; or each is in itself\nalone.\n\nNow if they should stand quite apart, neither calling for the\nother, they are two distinct things: Matter is something other than\nPrivation even though Privation always goes with it: into the\nprinciple of the one, the other cannot enter even potentially.\n\nIf their relation to each other is that of a snubnose to\nsnubness,\nhere also there is a double concept; we have two things.\n\nIf they stand to each other as fire to heat- heat in fire, but\nfire not included in the concept of heat- if Matter is Privation in\nthe way in which fire is heat, then the Privation is a form under\nwhich Matter appears but there remains a base distinct from the\nPrivation and this base must be the Matter. Here, too, they are not\none thing.\n\nPerhaps the identity in substance with differentiation in reason\nwill be defended on the ground that Privation does not point to\nsomething present but precisely to an absence, to something\nabsent, to\nthe negation or lack of Real-being: the case would be like\nthat of the\naffirmation of non-existence, where there is no real predication but\nsimply a denial.\n\nIs, then, this Privation simply a non-existence?\n\nIf a non-existence in the sense that it is not a thing of\nReal-being, but belongs to some other Kind of existent, we have\nstill two Principles, one referring directly to the substratum, the\nother merely exhibiting the relation of the Privation to\nother things.\n\nOr we might say that the one concept defines the relation of\nsubstratum to what is not substratum, while that of Privation, in\nbringing out the indeterminateness of Matter, applies to the\nMatter in\nitself: but this still makes Privation and Matter two in\nreason though\none in substratum.\n\nNow if Matter possesses an identity- though only the identity of\nbeing indeterminate, unfixed and without quality- how can we bring\nit so under two principles?\n\n\n## Section 15\n\n\n##### Section 15\n\n15. The further question, therefore, is raised whether\nboundlessness and indetermination are things lodging in something\nother than themselves as a sort of attribute and whether\nPrivation [or\nNegation of quality] is also an attribute residing in some separate\nsubstratum.\n\nNow all that is Number and Reason-Principle is outside of\nboundlessness: these bestow bound and settlement and order in\ngeneral upon all else: neither anything that has been brought under\norder nor any Order-Absolute is needed to bring them under order.\nThe thing that has to be brought under order [e.g., Matter] is other\nthan the Ordering Principle which is Limit and Definiteness and\nReason-Principle. Therefore, necessarily, the thing to be brought\nunder order and to definiteness must be in itself a thing lacking\ndelimitation.\n\nNow Matter is a thing that is brought under order- like all that\nshares its nature by participation or by possessing the same\nprinciple- therefore, necessarily, Matter is The Undelimited and not\nmerely the recipient of a nonessential quality of Indefiniteness\nentering as an attribute.\n\nFor, first, any attribute to any subject must be a\nReason-Principle; and Indefiniteness is not a Reason-Principle.\n\nSecondly, what must a thing be to take Indefiniteness as an\nattribute? Obviously it must, beforehand, be either Definiteness or\na defined thing. But Matter is neither.\n\nThen again Indefiniteness entering as an attribute into the\ndefinite must cease to be indefinite: but Indefiniteness has not\nentered as an attribute into Matter: that is, Matter is essentially\nIndefiniteness.\n\nThe Matter even of the Intellectual Realm is the Indefinite,\n[the undelimited]; it must be a thing generated by the undefined\nnature, the illimitable nature, of the Eternal Being, The One\nillimitableness, however, not possessing native existence There but\nengendered by The One.\n\nBut how can Matter be common to both spheres, be here and be\nThere?\n\nBecause even Indefiniteness has two phases.\n\nBut what difference can there be between phase and phase of\nIndefiniteness?\n\nThe difference of archetype and image.\n\nSo that Matter here [as only an image of Indefiniteness] would\nbe less indefinite?\n\nOn the contrary, more indefinite as an Image-thing remote from\ntrue being. Indefiniteness is the greater in the less ordered\nobject; the less deep in good, the deeper in evil. The Indeterminate\nin the Intellectual Realm, where there is truer being, might\nalmost be\ncalled merely an Image of Indefiniteness: in this lower Sphere where\nthere is less Being, where there is a refusal of the\nAuthentic, and an\nadoption of the Image-Kind, Indefiniteness is more authentically\nindefinite.\n\nBut this argument seems to make no difference between the\nindefinite object and Indefiniteness-essential. Is there none?\n\nIn any object in which Reason and Matter co-exist we distinguish\nbetween Indeterminateness and the Indeterminate subject: but where\nMatter stands alone we make them identical, or, better, we would say\nright out that in that case essential Indeterminateness is not\npresent; for it is a Reason-Principle and could not lodge in the\nindeterminate object without at once annulling the indeterminateness.\n\nMatter, then, must be described as Indefinite of itself, by its\nnatural opposition to Reason-Principle. Reason is Reason and nothing\nelse; just so Matter, opposed by its indeterminateness to Reason, is\nIndeterminateness and nothing else.\n\n\n## Section 16\n\n\n##### Section 16\n\n16. Then Matter is simply Alienism [the Principle of Difference]?\n\nNo: it is merely that part of Alienism which stands in\ncontradiction with the Authentic Existents which are\nReason-Principles. So understood, this non-existent has a certain\nmeasure of existence; for it is identical with Privation, which also\nis a thing standing in opposition to the things that exist in Reason.\n\nBut must not Privation cease to have existence, when\nwhat has been\nlacking is present at last?\n\nBy no means: the recipient of a state or character is not a\nstate but the Privation of the state; and that into which\ndetermination enters is neither a determined object nor\ndetermination itself, but simply the wholly or partly undetermined.\n\nStill, must not the nature of this Undetermined be\nannulled by the\nentry of Determination, especially where this is no mere attribute?\n\nNo doubt to introduce quantitative determination into an\nundetermined object would annul the original state; but in the\nparticular case, the introduction of determination only confirms the\noriginal state, bringing it into actuality, into full effect, as\nsowing brings out the natural quality of land or as a female\norganism impregnated by the male is not defeminized but becomes more\ndecidedly of its sex; the thing becomes more emphatically itself.\n\nBut on this reasoning must not Matter owe its evil to having in\nsome degree participated in good?\n\nNo: its evil is in its first lack: it was not a\npossessor (of some\nspecific character).\n\nTo lack one thing and to possess another, in something like\nequal proportions, is to hold a middle state of good and evil: but\nwhatsoever possesses nothing and so is in destitution- and\nespecially what is essentially destitution- must be evil in its own\nKind.\n\nFor in Matter we have no mere absence of means or of strength;\nit is utter destitution- of sense, of virtue, of beauty, of pattern,\nof Ideal principle, of quality. This is surely ugliness, utter\ndisgracefulness, unredeemed evil.\n\nThe Matter in the Intellectual Realm is an Existent, for there\nis nothing previous to it except the Beyond-Existence; but what\nprecedes the Matter of this sphere is Existence; by its alienism in\nregard to the beauty and good of Existence, Matter is therefore a\nnon-existent.",
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