Plato speaks of Matter as becoming dry, wet, inflamed, but we must remember the words that follow ; " and taking the shape of air and of water " : this blunts the expressions “ becoming wet, becoming in-
III. 6. .2] the impassivity of the unembodied
flamed ” ; once we have Matter thus admitting these shapes, we learn that it has not itself become a shaped thing but that the shapes remain distinct as they entered. We see, further, that the expression “ becoming inflamed ” is not to be taken strictly : it is rather a case of becoming fire. Becoming fire is very different from becoming inflamed which implies an outside agency and, therefore, susceptibility to modification. Matter, being itself a portion of fire, cannot be said to catch fire. To sug- gest that the fire not merely permeates the matter, but actually sets it on fire is like saying that a statue permeates its bronze (and " statufies ” it).
Further, if what enters must be an Ideal-Principle how could it set Matter aflame ? But what if it is a pattern or condition ? No : the object set aflame is so in virtue of the combination of Matter and con- dition.
But how can this follow on the conjunction when no unity has been produced by the two ?
Even if such a unity had been produced, it would be a unity of things not mutually sharing experiences but acting upon each other. And the question would then arise whether each was effective upon the other or whether the sole action was not that of one (the form) preventing the other (the Matter) from slipping away ?
But (another difficulty) when any material thing is severed, must not the Matter be divided with it ? Surely the bodily modification and other experience that have accompanied the sundering, must have occurred, identically, within the Matter ?
This reasoning would force the destructibility of Matter upon us ; “ the body is dissolved ; then the Matter is dissolved.” We would have to allow Matter to be a thing of quantity, a magnitude. But since it is not a magnitude it could not have the experiences that belong to magni- tude and, on the larger scale, since it is not body it cannot know the experiences of body.
In fact those that declare Matter subject to modification may as well declare it body right out.
Further, they must explain in what sense they hold that Matter tends to slip away from its form (the Idea), Can we conceive it stealing out from stones and rocks or whatever else envelops it ?
And of course they cannot pretend that Matter in some cases rebels and sometimes not. For if once it makes away of its own will, why should it not always escape ? If it is fixed despite itself, it must be enveloped by some Ideal-Form for good and aU. This, however, leaves still the question why a given portion of Matter does not remain constant to any one given form : the reason lies mainly in the fact that the Ideas are constantly passing into it.
In what sense, then, is it said to elude form ?
By very nature and for ever ?
But does not this precisely mean that it never ceases to be itself, in other words that its one form is an invincible formlessness ? In no other sense has Plato’s dictum any value to those that invoke it.
Matter (we read) is “ the receptacle and nurse of all generation.”
Now if Matter is such a receptacle and nurse, aU generation is distinct from it ; and since all the changeable lies in the realm of genera- tion, Matter, existing before all generation, must exist before all change.
” Receptacle ” and ” nurse ” ; then it “ retains its identity ; it is not subject to modification. Similarly if it is” (as again we read) “the ground on which individual things appear and disappear,” and so, too, if it is a “ place, a base,” Where Plato describes and identifies it as " a ground to the ideas ” he is not attributing any state to it ; he is probing after its distinctive manner of being.
And what is that ?
This which we think of as a Nature-Kind cannot be included among Existents but must utterly rebel from the Essence of Real Beings and be therefore whoUy something other than they — for they are Reason- Principles and possess Authentic Existence — it must inevitably, by virtue of that difference, retain its integrity to the point of being per- manently closed against them and, more, of rejecting close participation in any image of them.
Iii. 6. 13] the Impassivity of the Unembodied
Only on these terms can it be completely different : once it took any Idea to hearth and home, it would become a new thing, for it would cease to be the thing apart, the ground of all else, the receptacle of absolutely any and every form. If there is to be a ceaseless coming into it and going out from it, itself must be unmoved and immune in all the come and go. The entrant Idea will enter as an image, the untrue entering the untruth.
But, at least, in a true entry ?
No : How could there be a true entry into that which, by being falsity, is banned from ever touching truth ?
Is this then a pseudo-entry into a pseudo-entity — something merely brought near, as faces enter the mirror, there to remain just as long as the people look into it ?
Yes ; if we eliminated the Authentic Existents from this Sphere nothing of all now seen in sense would appear one moment longer.
Here the mirror itself is seen, for it is itself an Ideal-Form of a Kind (has some degree of Real Being) ; but bare Matter, which is no Idea, is not a visible thing ; if it were, it would have been visible in its own character before anything else appeared upon it. The condition of Matter may be illustrated by that of air penetrated by light and remaining, even so, unseen because it is invisible whatever happens.
The reflections in the mirror are not taken to be real, all the less since the appliance on which they appear is seen and remains while the images disappear, but Matter is not seen either with the images or without them. But suppose the reflections on the mirror remaining and the mirror itself not seen, we would never doubt the solid reality of all that appears.
If, then, there is, really, something in a mirror, we may suppose objects of sense to be in Matter in precisely that way ; if in the mirror there is nothing, if there is only a seeming of something, then we may judge that in Matter there is the same delusion and that the seeming is to be traced to the Substantial-Existence of the Real-Beings, that Sub- stantial-Existence in which the Authentic has the real participation while only an imreal participation can belong to the unauthentic since
their condition must differ from that which they would know if the parts were reversed, if the Authentic Existents were not and they were.
But would this mean that if there were no Matter nothing would exist ?
Precisely as in the absence of a mirror, or something of similar power, there would be no reflection.
A thing whose very nature is to be lodged in something else cannot exist where the base is lacking — and it is the character of a reflection to appear in something not itself.
Of course supposing anything to desert from the Authentic Beings, this would not need an alien base : but these Beings are not subject to flux, and therefore any outside manifestation of them implies something other than themselves, something offering a base to what never enters, something which by its presence, in its insistence, by its cry for help, in its beggardom, strives as it were by violence to acquire and is always disappointed so that its poverty is enduring, its cry unceasing.
This alien base exists and the myth represents it as a pauper to exhibit its nature, to show that Matter is destitute of The Good. The claimant does not ask for all the Giver’s store, but it welcomes whatever it can get ; in other words, what appears in Matter is not Reality.
The name, too (Poverty), conveys that Matter’s need is never met. The union with Poros, Possession, is designed to show that Matter does not attain to Reality, to Plenitude, but to some bare sufficiency — in point of fact to imaging skill.
It is, of course, impossible that an outside thing belonging in any degree to Real-Being — whose Nature is to engender Real-Beings — should utterly fail of participation in Reality ; but here we have something per- plexing ; we are dealing with utter Non-Being, absolutely without part in Reality ; what is this participation by the non-participant, and how does mere neighbouring confer anything on that which by its own nature is precluded from any association ?
The answer is that all that impinges upon this Non-Being is flung
Iii. 6. 15] the Impassivity of the Unembodied
back as from a repelling substance ; we may think of an Echo returned from a repercussive plane surface ; it is precisely because of the lack of retention that the phenomenon is supposed to belong to that particular place and even to arise there.
If Matter were participant and received Reality to the extent which we are apt to imagine, it would be penetrated by a Reality thus sucked into its constitution. But we know that the Entrant is not thus absorbed : Matter remains as it was, taking nothing to itself : it is the check to the forthwelling of Authentic Existence ; it is a ground that repels ; it is a mere receptacle to the Realities as they take their common path (of emanation) and here meet and mingle. It resembles those reflecting vessels, filled with water, which are often set against the sun to produce fire : the heat rays — prevented, by their contrary within, from being absorbed are flung out as one mass.
It is in this sense and way that Matter becomes the cause of the generated realm ; the combinations within it hold together only after some such reflective mode.
Now the objects attracting the sun-rays to themselves — illuminated by a fire of the sense-order — are necessarily of the sense-order ; there is perceptibility because there has been a union of things at once external to each other and continuous, contiguous, in direct contact, two extremes in one line. But the Reason-Principle operating upon Matter is external to it only in a very different mode and sense ; exteriority in this case is amply supplied by contrariety of essence and can dispense with any opposite ends (any question of lineal position) ; or, rather, the difference is one that actually debars any local extremity ; sheer incongruity of essence, the utter failure in relationship, inhibits admixture (between Matter and any form of Being).
The reason, then, of the immutability of Matter is that the entrant principle neither possesses it nor is possessed by it. Consider, as an example, the mode in which an opinion or representation is present in the mind ; there is no admixture ; the notion that came goes in its time.
still integrally itself alone, taking nothing with it, leaving nothing after it, because it has not been blended with the mind ; there is no “ outside ” in the sense of contact broken, and the distinction between base and entrant is patent not to the senses but to the reason.
In that example, no doubt, the mental representation — though it seems to have a wide and unchecked control — is an image, while the Soul (Mind) is in its nature not an image (but a Reality) : none the less the Soul or Mind certainly stands to the concept as Matter, or in some analogous relation. The representation, however, does not cover the Mind over ; on the contrary it is often expelled by some activity there ; however urgently it presses in, it never effects such an obliteration as to be taken for the Soul ; it is confronted there by indwelling powers, by Reason-Prmciples, which repel aU such attack.