14. Let us now examine if matter be privation, or if privation be
an attribute of matter. If you insist that privation and matter are
though logically distinct, substantially one and the same thing, you
will have to explain the nature of these two things, for instance,
defining matter without defining privation, and conversely. Either,
neither of these two things implies the other, or they imply each other
reciprocally, or only one of them implies the other. If each of them
can be defined separately, and if neither of them imply the other,
both will form two distinct things, and matter will be different from
privation, though privation be an accident of matter. But neither of
the two must even potentially be present in the definition of the
other. Is their mutual relation the same as that of a stub nose, and
the man with the stub nose (as suggested by Aristotle)?[308] Then each
of these is double, and there are two things. Is their relation that
between fire and heat? Heat is in fire, but fire is not necessarily
contained in heat; thus matter, having privation (as a quality), as
fire has heat (as a quality), privation will be a form of matter, and
has a substrate different from itself, which is matter.[309] Not in
this sense, therefore, is there a unity (between them).