9. It may be objected that it would be impossible to conceive of
something without magnitude. The fact is that not everything is
identical with quantity. Essence is distinct from quantity; for many
other things beside it exist. Consequently no incorporeal nature has
any quantity. Matter, therefore, is incorporeal. Besides, even quantity
itself is not quantative, which characterizes only what participates
in quantity (in general); a further proof that quantity is a form,
as an object becomes white by the presence of whiteness; and as that
which, in the animal, produces whiteness and the different colors, is
not a varied color, but a varied reason; likewise that which produces a
quantity is not a definite quantity, but either quantity in itself, or
quantity as such, or the reason of quantity. Does quantity, on entering
into matter extend matter, so as to give it magnitude? By no means, for
matter had not been condensed. Form therefore imparts to matter the
magnitude which it did not possess, just as form impresses on matter
the quality it lacked.[297]
BY ABSTRACTION, THE SOUL CAN FIND AND DESCRY THE QUALITY-LESS
THING-IN-ITSELF: THIS PROCESS IS CALLED "BASTARD REASONING."
10. (Some objector) might ask how one could conceive of matter without
quantity? This might be answered by a retort. How then do you (as you
do) manage to conceive of it without quality? Do you again object,
by what conception or intelligence could it be reached? By the very
indetermination of the soul. Since that which knows must be similar to
that which is known (as Aristotle[298] quotes from Empedocles), the
indeterminate must be grasped by the indeterminate. Reason, indeed,
may be determined in respect to the indeterminate; but the glance
which reason directs on the indeterminate itself is indeterminate.
If everything were known by reason and by intelligence, reason here
tells us about matter what reason rightly should tell us about it. By
wishing to conceive of matter in an intellectual manner, intelligence
arrives at a state which is the absence of intelligence, or rather,
reason forms of matter a "bastard" or "illegitimate" image, which is
derived from the other, which is not true, and which is composed of the
other (deceptive material called) reason. That is why Plato[299] said
that matter is perceived by a "bastard reasoning." In what does the
indetermination of the soul consist? In an absolute ignorance, or in
a complete absence of all knowledge? No: the indeterminate condition
of the soul implies something positive (besides something negative).
As for the eye, darkness is the matter of all invisible color, so
the soul, by making abstraction in sense-objects of all things that
somehow are luminous, cannot determine what then remains; and likewise,
as the eye, in darkness (becomes assimilated to darkness), the soul
becomes assimilated to what she sees. Does she then see anything else?
Doubtless, she sees something without figure, without color, without
light, or even without magnitude.[300] If this thing had any magnitude,
the soul would lend it a form.