8. What then is this matter which is one, continuous, and without
qualities? Evidently, it could not be a body, since it has no quality;
if it were a body, it would have a quality. We say that it is the
matter of all sense-objects, and not the matter of some, and the form
of others, just as clay is matter, in respect to the potter, without
being matter absolutely (as thought Aristotle).[295] As we are not
considering the matter of any particular object, but the matter of all
things, we would not attribute to its nature anything of what falls
under our senses--no quality, color, heat, cold, lightness, weight,
density, sparseness, figure or magnitude; for magnitude is something
entirely different from being large, and figure from the figured
object. Matter therefore is not anything composite, but something
simple, and by nature one (according to the views of Plato and
Aristotle combined).[296] Only thus could matter be deprived of all
properties (as it is).
MATTER AND THE INFORMING PRINCIPLE MUST BE CONTEMPORARIES TO ACCOUNT
FOR THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS.
The principle which informs matter will give it form as something
foreign to its nature; it will also introduce magnitude and all the
real properties. Otherwise, it would be enslaved to the magnitude
of matter, and could not decide of the magnitude of matter, and
magnitude would be dependent on the disposition of matter. A theory
of a consultation between it and the magnitude of matter would be
an absurd fiction. On the contrary, if the efficient cause precede
matter, matter will be exactly as desired by the efficient cause, and
be capable of docilely receiving any kind of form, including magnitude.
If matter possessed magnitude, it would also possess figure, and
would thus be rather difficult to fashion. Form therefore enters into
matter by importing into it (what constitutes corporeal being); now
every form contains a magnitude and a quantity which are determined by
reason ("being"), and with reason. That is why in all kinds of beings,
quantity is determined only along with form; for the quantity (the
magnitude) of man is not the quantity of the bird. It would be absurd
to insist on the difference between giving to matter the quantity of a
bird, and impressing its quality on it, that quality is a reason, while
quantity is not a form; for quantity is both measure and number.