16. Is there any identity between matter and otherness? Matter is not
identical with otherness itself, but with that part of otherness which
is opposed to real beings, and to reasons. It is in this sense that
one can say of nonentity that it is something, that it is identical
with privation, if only privation be the opposition to things that
exist in reason. Will privation be destroyed by its union with the
thing of which it is an attribute? By no means. That in which a (Stoic)
"habit" occurs is not itself a "habit," but a privation. That in
which determination occurs is neither determination, nor that which
is determined, but the infinite, so far as it is infinite. How could
determination unite with the infinite without destroying its nature,
since this infinite is not such by accident? It would destroy this
infinite, if it were infinite in quantity; but that is not the case. On
the contrary, it preserves its "being" for it, realizes and completes
its nature; as the earth which did not contain seeds (preserves its
nature) when it receives some of them; or the female, when she is
made pregnant by the male. The female, then, does not cease being a
female; on the contrary she is so far more, for she realizes her nature
("being").