Page:Enneads (IA enneads05plot).pdf/49
Reality, Matter, the mere base and not the total, could not be that whole.
Most surprising of all is that, while they make sense-perception their guarantee of everything, they hold that the Real cannot be grasped by sensation; for they have no right to assign to Matter even so much as resistance, since resistance is a quality. If however they profess to grasp Reality by Intellect, is it not a strange Intellect which ranks Matter above itself, giving Reality to Matter and not to itself? And as their "Intellect" has, thus, no Real-Existence, how can it be trustworthy when it speaks of things higher than itself, things to which it has no affinity whatever?
But an adequate treatment of this entity (Matter) and of substrates will be found elsewhere.
29.
Qualities must be for this school distinct from Substrates. This in fact they acknowledge by counting them as the second category. If then they form a distinct category, they must be simplex; that is to say they are not composite; that is to say that as qualities, pure and simple, they are devoid of Matter: hence they are bodiless and active, since Matter is their substrate—a relation of passivity.
If however they hold Qualities to be composite, that is a strange classification which first contrasts simple and composite qualities, then proceeds to include them in one genus, and finally includes one of the two species (simple) in the other (composite); it is like dividing knowledge into two species, the first comprising grammatical knowledge, the second made up of grammatical and other knowledge.
Again, if they identify Qualities with qualifications of Matter, then in the first place even their Seminal Principles (Logoi) will be material, and will not have to reside in Matter to produce a composite, but prior to the composite thus produced they will themselves be composed of Matter and Form: in other words, they will not be Forms or Principles. Further, if they maintain that the Seminal Principles are nothing but Matter in a certain state, they evidently identify Qualities with States,