But how shall we separate the accidents from sense-being, if it have
no existence without dimension or quality? Of what will sense-being
consist, if we remove from it dimension, figure (or outward
appearance), color, dryness, and humidity? For sense-beings are
qualified. The qualities which change simple into qualified "being"
refer to something. Thus, it is not the entire fire which is being,
but something of the fire, one of its parts. Now what is this part, if
it be not matter? Sense-being, therefore, consists in the reunion of
quality and matter; and being is constituted by the totality of these
things blended in a single matter. Each thing taken separately will be
quality or quantity, and so forth; but the thing whose absence makes
"being" incomplete is a part of that being. As to the thing which is
added to already complete being, it has its own place;[374] and it is
not lost in the blending which constitutes "being." I do not say that
such a thing, taken with others, is a being when it completes a matter
of some particular size and quality, and that it is no more than a
quality when it does not complete this mass; I say that even here below
not everything is "being," and that only the totality which embraces
everything is "being." Let none complain that we are constituting
"being" as of that which is not being; for even the totality is not
a veritable "being." (Here this word is used in both sensual and
intelligible senses, as a pun), and only offers the image of the
veritable (Being), which possesses essence independently of all that
refers to it, and itself produces the other things because it possesses
veritable (Existence). Here below the substrate possesses essence only
incompletely, and, far from producing other things, is sterile; it is
only an adumbration, and onto this adumbration are reflected images
which have only the appearance (instead of real existence.)[375]