The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

ment shapeless ; no doubt that is true of the Matter here as well ; but shape is held by a very different right in the two orders of Matter.

As to whether Matter is eternal or a thing of process, this will be clear when we are sure of its precise nature.

4-

The present existence of the Ideal-Forms has been demonstrated elsewhere : we take up our argument from that point.

i8o

PLOTINUS

If, then, there is more than one of such forming Ideas, there must of necessity be some character common to all and equally some peculiar character in each keeping them distinct.

This peculiar characteristic, this distinguishing difference, is the individual shape. But if shape, then there is the shaped, that in which the difference is lodged.

There is, therefore, a Matter accepting the shape, a permanent substratum.

Further, admitting that there is an Intelligible Realm beyond, of which this world is an image, then, since this world-compound is based on Matter, there must be Matter there also.

And how can you predicate an ordered system without thinking of form, and how think of form apart from the notion of something in which the form is lodged ?

No doubt that Realm is, in the strict fact, utterly without parts, but in some sense there is part there too. And in so far as these parts are really separate from each other, any such division and difference can be no other than a condition of Matter, of a something divided and differentiated ; in so fat as that realm, though without parts, yet consists of a variety of entities, these diverse entities, residing in a unity of which they are variations, reside in a Matter ; for this unity, since it is also a diversity, must be conceived of as varied and multiform ; it must have been shapeless before it took the form in which variation occurs. For if we abstract from the Intellectual-Principle the variety and the particular shapes, the Reason-Principles and the Thoughts, what precedes these was something shapeless and undetermined, nothing of what is actually present there.

5-

It may be objected that the Intellectual- Principle possesses its content in an eternal conjunction so that the two make a perfect unity, and that thus there is no Matter tliere.

But that argument would equally cancel the Matter present in the bodily forms of this realm ; body without shape has never existed.

II- 4. 5]

MATTER IN ITS TWO KINDS

i8i always body achieved and yet always the two constituents.

there is no Matter tliere.

But that argument would equally cancel the Matter present in the bodily forms of this realm ; body without shape has never existed.

II- 4. 5]

MATTER IN ITS TWO KINDS

i8i always body achieved and yet always the two constituents. We discover these two — Matter and Idea — by sheer force of our reasoning which distinguishes continually in pursuit of the simplex, the irreducible, working on, until it can go no further, towards the ultimate in the subject of enquiry. And the ultimate of every partial-thing is its Matter, which, therefore, must be all darkness since light is a Reason-Principle. The Mind, too, as also a Reason-Principle, sees only in each particular object the Reason-Principle lodging there ; anything lying below that it declares to lie below the light, to be therefore a thing of darkness, just as the eye, a thing of light, seeks light and colours which are modes of light, and dismisses all that is below the colours and hidden by them, as belonging to the order of the darkness, which is the order of Matter.

The dark element in the Intelligible, however, differs from that in the sense-world : so therefore does the Matter — as much as the formingidea presiding in each of the two realms. The Divine Matter, though (like the Matter here) it is the object of determination has, of its own nature, a life defined and intellectual ; the Matter of this sphere while it does accept determination is not living or intellective, but a dead thing decorated : any shape it takes is an image, exactly as the Base is an image. There on the contrary the shape is a real-existent as is the Base. Those that ascribe Real Being to Matter must be admitted to be right as long as they keep to the Matter of the Intelligible Realm : for the Base there is Being, or even, taken as an entirety with the higher that accompanies it, is illuminated Being.

But does this Base, of the Intellectual Realm, possess eternal existence ?

The solution of that question is the same as for the Ideas.

Both are engendered, in the sense that they have had a beginning, but unengendered in that this beginning is not in Time : they have a derived being but by an eternal derivation : they are not, like the Kosmos, always in process but, in the character of the Supernal, have their Being permanently.

hat they have had a beginning, but unengendered in that this beginning is not in Time : they have a derived being but by an eternal derivation : they are not, like the Kosmos, always in process but, in the character of the Supernal, have their Being permanently. For that differentiation within the Intelligible which produces Matter has always existed and it is this cleavage which produces the Matter there : it is the first movement ; and movement and differeni82

PLOTINUS

tiation are convertible terms since the two things arose as one : this motion, this cleavage, away from the first is indetermination ( = Matter), needing The First to its determination which it achieves by its Return, remaining, until then, an Alienism, still lacking good ; unlit by the Supernal. It is from the Divine that all light comes, and, until this be absorbed, no light in any recipient of light can be authentic ; any light from elsewhere is of another order than the true.

6.

We are led thus to the question of receptivity in things of body.

An additional proof that bodies must have some substratum different from themselves, is found in the changing of the basic-constituents into one another. Notice that the destruction of the elements passing over is not complete — if it were we would have a Principle of Being wrecked in Non-being — nor does an engendered thing pass from utter non-being into Being : what happens is that a new form takes the place of an old. There is, then, a stable element, that which puts off one form to receive the form of the incoming entity.

The same fact is clearly established by decay, a process implying a compound object ; where there is decay there is a distinction between Matter and Form.

And the reasoning which shows the destructible to be a compound is borne out by practical examples of reduction : a drinking vessel is reduced to its gold, the gold to liquid ; analogy forces us to believe that the liquid too is reducible.

The basic-constituents of things must be either their Form-Idea or that Primal Matter (of the Intelligible) or a compound of the Form and Matter.

Form-Idea, pure and simple, they cannot be : for without Matter how could things stand in their mass and magnitude ?

Neither can they be that Primal Matter for they are not indestructible.

They must, therefore, consist of Matter and Form-Idea— Form forp. 183 quality and shape, Matter for the base, indeterminate as being other than Idea.

7-

Empedokles in identifying his “ elements ” with Matter is refuted by their decay.