Other things possess something besides this relation of Alienism: their form makes each an entity.Matter may with propriety be described as merely alien; perhaps, even, we might describe it as "The Aliens," for the singular suggests a certain definiteness while the plural would indicate the absence of any determination.
14.But is Absence this privation itself, or something in which this Privation is lodged?
Anyone maintaining that Matter and Privation are one and the same in substratum but stand separable in reason cannot be excused from assigning to each the precise principle which distinguishes it in reason from the other: that which defines Matter must be kept quite apart from that defining the Privation and vice versa.
There are three possibilities: Matter is not in Privation and Privation is not in Matter; or each is in each; or each is in itself alone.
Now if they should stand quite apart, neither calling for the other, they are two distinct things: Matter is something other than Privation even though Privation always goes with it: into the principle of the one, the other cannot enter even potentially.
If their relation to each other is that of a snubnose to snubness, here also there is a double concept; we have two things.
If they stand to each other as fire to heat- heat in fire, but fire not included in the concept of heat- if Matter is Privation in the way in which fire is heat, then the Privation is a form under which Matter appears but there remains a base distinct from the Privation and this base must be the Matter.Here, too, they are not one thing.
Perhaps the identity in substance with differentiation in reason will be defended on the ground that Privation does not point to something present but precisely to an absence, to something absent, to the negation or lack of Real-being: the case would be like that of the affirmation of non-existence, where there is no real predication but simply a denial.
Is, then, this Privation simply a non-existence?
If a non-existence in the sense that it is not a thing of Real-being, but belongs to some other Kind of existent, we have still two Principles, one referring directly to the substratum, the other merely exhibiting the relation of the Privation to other things.
Or we might say that the one concept defines the relation of substratum to what is not substratum, while that of Privation, in bringing out the indeterminateness of Matter, applies to the Matter in itself: but this still makes Privation and Matter two in reason though one in substratum.
Now if Matter possesses an identity- though only the identity of being indeterminate, unfixed and without quality- how can we bring it so under two principles?
15.The further question, therefore, is raised whether boundlessness and indetermination are things lodging in something other than themselves as a sort of attribute and whether Privation [or Negation of quality] is also an attribute residing in some separate substratum.
Now all that is Number and Reason-Principle is outside of boundlessness: these bestow bound and settlement and order in general upon all else: neither anything that has been brought under order nor any Order-Absolute is needed to bring them under order.
The thing that has to be brought under order [e.g., Matter] is other than the Ordering Principle which is Limit and Definiteness and Reason-Principle.Therefore, necessarily, the thing to be brought under order and to definiteness must be in itself a thing lacking delimitation.
Now Matter is a thing that is brought under order- like all that shares its nature by participation or by possessing the same principle- therefore, necessarily, Matter is The Undelimited and not merely the recipient of a nonessential quality of Indefiniteness entering as an attribute.
For, first, any attribute to any subject must be a Reason-Principle; and Indefiniteness is not a Reason-Principle.
Secondly, what must a thing be to take Indefiniteness as an attribute? Obviously it must, beforehand, be either Definiteness or a defined thing.But Matter is neither.
Then again Indefiniteness entering as an attribute into the definite must cease to be indefinite: but Indefiniteness has not entered as an attribute into Matter: that is, Matter is essentially Indefiniteness.
The Matter even of the Intellectual Realm is the Indefinite, [the undelimited]; it must be a thing generated by the undefined nature, the illimitable nature, of the Eternal Being, The One illimitableness, however, not possessing native existence There but engendered by The One.
But how can Matter be common to both spheres, be here and be There?
Because even Indefiniteness has two phases.
But what difference can there be between phase and phase of Indefiniteness?
The difference of archetype and image.
So that Matter here [as only an image of Indefiniteness] would be less indefinite?
On the contrary, more indefinite as an Image-thing remote from true being.Indefiniteness is the greater in the less ordered object; the less deep in good, the deeper in evil.The Indeterminate in the Intellectual Realm, where there is truer being, might almost be called merely an Image of Indefiniteness: in this lower Sphere where there is less Being, where there is a refusal of the Authentic, and an adoption of the Image-Kind, Indefiniteness is more authentically indefinite.
But this argument seems to make no difference between the indefinite object and Indefiniteness-essential.Is there none?
In any object in which Reason and Matter co-exist we distinguish between Indeterminateness and the Indeterminate subject: but where Matter stands alone we make them identical, or, better, we would say right out that in that case essential Indeterminateness is not present; for it is a Reason-Principle and could not lodge in the indeterminate object without at once annulling the indeterminateness.