If matter participated in the existence of genuine beings and received
them within itself, as might easily be thought, that which would enter
into it would penetrate deeply into matter; but evidently matter is
not penetrated thereby, remaining unreceptive of any of it. On the
contrary, matter arrests their "procession," as echo arrests and
reflects sound-waves, matter being only the "residence" (or, "jar" or
vase) of the things that enter within it, and there mingle with each
other. Everything takes place there as in the case of persons who,
wishing to light fire from the rays of the sun, should place in front
of these rays polished jars filled with water, so that the flame,
arrested by the obstacles met within, should not be able to penetrate,
and should concentrate on their outside. That is how matter becomes
the cause of generation; that is how things occur within it.
THE RELATION OF MATTER TO REASON ILLUSTRATED BY THAT OF OPINION AND
IMAGINATION.
15. The objects that concentrate the rays of the sun, are themselves
visible, by receiving from the fire of sensation what takes fire in
their hearth. They appear because the images that form themselves are
around and near them, and touch each other, and finally because there
are two limits in these objects. But when the ("seminal) reason" is
in matter, it remains exterior to matter in an entirely different
manner; it has a different nature. Here it is not necessary that
there be two limits; matter and reason are strangers to each other by
difference of nature, and by the difference between their natures that
makes any mixture of them impossible. The cause that each remains in
itself is that what enters into matter does not possess it, any more
than matter possesses what enters into it. That is how opinion and
imagination do not mingle in our soul,[75] and each remains what it
was, without entailing or leaving anything, because no mingling can
occur. These powers are foreign to each other, not in that there is a
mere juxtaposition, but because between them obtains a difference that
is grasped by reason, instead of being seen by sight. Here imagination
is a kind of phantom, though the soul herself be no phantom, and though
she seem to accomplish, and though she really accomplish many deeds as
she desires to accomplish them.
Thus imagination stands to the soul in about the same lation as (form)
with matter. Nevertheless (imagination) does not hide the soul, whose
operations often disarrange and disturb it. Never could imagination
hide the soul entirely, even if imagination should penetrate the soul
entirely, and should seem to veil it completely. Indeed, the soul
contains operations and reasons contrary (to imagination), by which
she succeeds in putting aside the phantoms that besiege her.[76] But
matter, being infinitely feebler than the soul, possesses none of the
beings, either of the true or false, which characteristically belong
to it. Matter has nothing that could show it off, being absolutely
denuded of all things. It is no more than a cause of appearance for
other things; it could never say, "I am here, or there!" If, starting
from other beings,[77] profound reasoning should succeed in discovering
matter, it ultimately declares that matter is something completely
abandoned by true beings; but as the things that are posterior to true
beings themselves seem to exist, matter might, so to speak, be said to
be extended in all these things, seeming both to follow them, and not
to follow them.