27.On other grounds also, it is indefensible not to have reserved the high place for the true first-principle of things but to have set up in its stead the formless, passive and lifeless, the irrational, dark and indeterminate, and to have made this the source of Being.In this theory God is introduced merely for the sake of appearance: deriving existence from Matter he is a composite, a derivative, or, worse, a mere state of Matter.
Another consideration is that, if Matter is a substrate, there must be something outside it, which, acting on it and distinct from it, makes it the substrate of what is poured into it.But if God is lodged in Matter and by being involved in Matter is himself no more than a substrate, he will no longer make Matter a substrate nor be himself a substrate in conjunction with Matter.For of what will they be substrates, when that which could make them substrates is eliminated? This so-called substrate turns out to have swallowed up all that is; but a substrate must be relative, and relative not to its content but to something which acts upon it as upon a datum.
Again, the substrate comports a relation to that which is not substrate; hence, to something external to it: there must, then, be something apart from the substrate.If nothing distinct and external is considered necessary, but the substrate itself can become everything and adopt every character, like the versatile dancer in the pantomime, it ceases to be a substrate: it is, essentially, everything.The mime is not a substrate of the characters he puts on; these are in fact the realisation of his own personality:
similarly, if the Matter with which this theory presents us comports in its own being all the realities, it is no longer the substrate of all: on the contrary, the other things can have no reality whatever, if they are no more than states of Matter in the sense that the poses of the mime are states through which he passes.
Then, those other things not existing, Matter will not be a substrate, nor will it have a place among the Existents; it will be Matter bare, and for that reason not even Matter, since Matter is a relative.The relative is relative to something else: it must, further, be homogeneous with that something else: double is relative to half, but not Substance to double.
How then can an Existent be relative to a Non-existent, except accidentally? But the True-Existent, or Matter, is related (to what emerges from it) as Existent to Non-Existent.For if potentiality is that which holds the promise of existence and that promise does not constitute Reality, the potentiality cannot be a Reality.In sum, these very teachers who deprecate the production of Realities from Nonrealities, themselves produce Non-reality from Reality; for to them the universe as such is not a Reality.
But is it not a paradox that, while Matter, the Substrate, is to them an existence, bodies should not have more claim to existence, the universe yet more, and not merely a claim grounded on the reality of one of its parts?
It is no less paradoxical that the living form should owe existence not to its soul but to its Matter only, the soul being but an affection of Matter and posterior to it.From what source then did Matter receive ensoulment? Whence, in short, is soul's entity derived? How does it occur that Matter sometimes turns into bodies, while another part of it turns into Soul? Even supposing that Form might come to it from elsewhere, that accession of Quality to Matter would account not for Soul, but simply for organized body soulless.
If, on the contrary, there is something which both moulds Matter and produces Soul, then prior to the produced there must be Soul the producer.
28.Many as are the objections to this theory, we pass on for fear of the ridicule we might incur by arguing against a position itself so manifestly ridiculous.We may be content with pointing out that it assigns the primacy to the Non-existent and treats it as the very summit of Existence: in short, it places the last thing first.The reason for this procedure lies in the acceptance of sense-perception as a trustworthy guide to first-principles and to all other entities.
This philosophy began by identifying the Real with body; then, viewing with apprehension the transmutations of bodies, decided that Reality was that which is permanent beneath the superficial changes-which is much as if one regarded space as having more title to Reality than the bodies within it, on the principle that space does not perish with them.They found a permanent in space, but it was a fault to take mere permanence as in itself a sufficient definition of the Real;the right method would have been to consider what properties must characterize Reality, by the presence of which properties it has also that of unfailing permanence.Thus if a shadow had permanence, accompanying an object through every change, that would not make it more real than the object itself.The sensible universe, as including the Substrate and a multitude of attributes, will thus have more claim to be Reality entire than has any one of its component entities (such as Matter): and if the sensible were in very truth the whole of Reality, Matter, the mere base and not the total, could not be that whole.
Most surprising of all is that, while they make sense-perception their guarantee of everything, they hold that the Real cannot be grasped by sensation;- for they have no right to assign to Matter even so much as resistance, since resistance is a quality.If however they profess to grasp Reality by Intellect, is it not a strange Intellect which ranks Matter above itself, giving Reality to Matter and not to itself? And as their "Intellect" has, thus, no Real-Existence, how can it be trustworthy when it speaks of things higher than itself, things to which it has no affinity whatever?
But an adequate treatment of this entity [Matter] and of substrates will be found elsewhere.
29.Qualities must be for this school distinct from Substrates.