Such are the objections that may be raised against those who consider
all beings as corporeal; who wish to judge of their existence only by
impressions they receive therefrom, and who try to found the certitude
of truth on the images of sensation.[73] They resemble sleeping men
who take as realities the visions they have in their dreams. Sensation
is the dream of the soul;[52] so long as the soul is in the body, she
dreams; the real awakening of the soul consists in genuine separation
from the body, and not in rising along with the body. To rise with
the body is to pass from one sleep into another kind; from one bed
to another; really to awake is to separate oneself completely from
the body. The body, whose nature is contrary to that of the soul,
consequently has a nature contrary to that of "being." This is proved
by the generation, flux, and decay of bodies, all processes contrary to
the nature of "being."
MATTER COMPARED TO A MIRROR WHICH REFLECTS EVERYTHING THOUGH REALLY
EMPTY.
7. Let us return to matter as a substrate, and then to what is said
to exist within it. This will lead us to see that it consists of
nonentity, and that it is impassible. Matter is incorporeal because
the body exists only as posterior thereto, because it is a composite
of which it constitutes an element. It is called incorporeal because
existence and matter are two things equally distinct from the body. Not
being soul, matter is neither intelligence, nor life, nor ("seminal)
reason," nor limit. It is a kind of infinity.[53] Neither is it an
(active) power;[54] for what could it produce? Since matter is none
of the above-mentioned things, it could not be called existence. It
deserves only the name "nonentity" yet not even in the sense in which
we may say that movement or rest are not existence;[55] matter is real
nonentity. It is an image and phantom of extension, it is aspiration to
a form of hypostatic existence. Its perseverance is not in rest (but in
change). By itself, it is invisible, it escapes whoever wishes to see
it. It is present when you do not look at it, it escapes the eye that
seeks it. It seems to contain all the contraries: the large and small,
the more and the less, the lack and excess.[56] It is a phantom equally
incapable of remaining or escaping; for matter does not even have
the strength of avoiding (form), because it has received no strength
from intelligence, and it is the lack of all existence. Consequently,
all its appearances are deceptions. If we represent matter as being
greatness, it immediately appears as smallness; if we represent it as
the more, we are forced to recognize it as the less. When we try to
conceive of its existence, it appears as nonentity; like all the things
it contains, it is a fugitive shadow, and a fleeting game, an image
within an image. It resembles a mirror, in which one might see the
reflections of objects external to it; the mirror seems to be filled,
and to possess everything, though really containing nothing.
AS OBJECTS ARE MERELY REFLECTIONS IN A MIRROR, MATTER IS NO MORE
AFFECTED BY THEM THAN WOULD BE A MIRROR.
Thus matter is a shapeless image, into which enter, and out of which
issue the images of beings. These appear in it precisely because
matter has no shape, though they seem to produce something in it, they
really produce nothing in it.[57] They have no consistence, strength,
nor solidity; as matter has none either, they enter into it without
dividing it, as if they would penetrate water, or as shapes might move
in emptiness. If the images that appear in matter had the same nature
as the objects they represent and from which they emanate, then, if
we attribute to the images a little of the power of the objects that
project them, we might be right in considering them able to affect
matter. But as the things that we see in matter do not have the same
nature as the objects of which they are the images, it is not true
that matter suffers when receiving them; they are no more than false
appearances without any resemblance to what produces them. Feeble and
false by themselves, they enter into a thing that is equally false.[58]
They must therefore leave it as impassible as a mirror, or water;
producing on it no more effect than does a dream on the soul. These
comparisons, however, are yet imperfect, because in these cases there
is still some resemblance between the images and the objects.