Besides, there is a great difference between the dark bottom of
intelligible things and that of sense-objects; there is as much
difference between the matter of the former and of the latter as there
is between their form. The divine matter, on receiving the form that
determines it, possesses an intellectual and determinate life. On
the contrary, even when the matter of the bodies becomes something
determinate, it is neither alive nor thinking; it is dead, in spite
of its borrowed beauty.[285] As the shape (of sense-objects) is only
an image, their substrate also is only an image. But as the shape (of
intelligible entities) possesses veritable (reality), their substrate
is of the same nature. We have, therefore, full justification for
calling matter "being," that is, when referring to intelligible
matter; for the substrate of intelligible entities really is "being,"
especially if conceived of together with its inherent (form). For
"being" is the luminous totality (or complex of matter and form).
To question the eternity of intelligible matter is tantamount to
questioning that of ideas; indeed, intelligible entities are begotten
in the sense that they have a principle; but they are non-begotten in
the sense that their existence had no beginning, and that, from all
eternity, they derive their existence from their principle. Therefore
they do not resemble the things that are always becoming, as our world;
but, like the intelligible world, they ever exist.