10. (7) According to the ancient (sages) such are the properties of
matter. "Matter is incorporeal because it differs from bodies. Matter
is not lifeless, because it is neither intelligence, nor soul, nor
anything that lives by itself. It is formless, variable, infinite,
impotent; consequently, matter cannot be existence, but nonentity. Of
course it is not nonentity in the same way that movement is nonentity;
matter is nonentity really. It is an image and a phantom of extension,
because it is the primary substrate of extension. It is impotence, and
the desire for existence. The only reason that it persists is not rest
(but change); it always seems to contain contraries, the great and
small, the less and more, lack and excess. It is always "becoming,"
without ever persisting in its condition, or being able to come out of
it. Matter is the lack of all existence; and, consequently, what matter
seems to be is a deception. If, for instance, matter seems to be large,
it really is small; like a mere phantom, it escapes and evanesces into
nonentity, not by any change of place, but by its lack of reality.
Consequently, the substrate of the images in matter consists of a lower
image. That in which objects present appearances that differ according
to their positions is a mirror, a mirror that seems crowded, though it
possesses nothing, and which yet seems to be everything."