MacKenna-Plotinus: substratum

But if Matter is devoid of quality how can it be evil? It is described as being devoid of quality in the sense only that it does not essentially possess any of the qualities which it admits and which enter into it as into a substratum. No one says that it has no nature; and if it has any nature at all, why may not that nature be evil though not in the sense of quality? Quality qualifies something not itself: it is therefore an accidental; it resides in some other object. Matter does not exist in some other object but is the substratum in which the accidental resides. Matter, then, is said to be devoid of Quality in that it does not in itself possess this thing which is by nature an accidental. If, moreover, Quality itself be devoid of Quality, how can Matter, which is the unqualified, be said to have it? Thus, it is quite correct to say at once that Matter is without Quality and that it is evil: it is Evil not in the sense of having Quality but, precisely, in not having it; give it Quality and in its very Evil it would almost be a Form, whereas in Truth it is a Kind contrary to Form. Enneads   I,8,

There is, therefore, a Matter accepting the shape, a permanent substratum. Enneads II,4,

An additional proof that bodies must have some substratum different from themselves is found in the changing of the basic-constituents into one another. Notice that the destruction of the elements passing over is not complete – if it were we would have a Principle of Being wrecked in Non-being – nor does an engendered thing pass from utter non-being into Being: what happens is that a new form takes the place of an old. There is, then, a stable element, that which puts off one form to receive the form of the incoming entity. Enneads II,4,

"Or, taking a larger view, observe that actions, productive operations, periods of time, movements, none of these have any such substratum and yet are real things; in the same way the most elementary body has no need of Matter; things may be, all, what they are, each after its own kind, in their great variety, deriving the coherence of their being from the blending of the various Ideal-Forms. This Matter with its sizelessness seems, then, to be a name without a content." Enneads II,4,

Bodies are compound, actions not. Further, Matter does in some sense underlie action; it supplies the substratum to the doer: it is permanently within him though it does not enter as a constituent into the act where, indeed, it would be a hindrance. Doubtless, one act does not change into another – as would be the case if there were a specific Matter of actions – but the doer directs himself from one act to another so that he is the Matter, himself, to his varying actions. Enneads II,4,

Are we asked to accept as the substratum some attribute or quality present to all the elements in common? Then, first, we must be told what precise attribute this is and, next, how an attribute can be a substratum. Enneads II,4,

The elements are sizeless, and how conceive an attribute where there is neither base nor bulk? Again, if the quality possesses determination, it is not Matter the undetermined; and anything without determination is not a quality but is the substratum – the very Matter we are seeking. Enneads II,4,

But is Absence this privation itself, or something in which this Privation is lodged? Anyone maintaining that Matter and Privation are one and the same in substratum but stand separable in reason cannot be excused from assigning to each the precise principle which distinguishes it in reason from the other: that which defines Matter must be kept quite apart from that defining the Privation and vice versa. Enneads II,4,

Is, then, this Privation simply a non-existence? If a non-existence in the sense that it is not a thing of Real-being, but belongs to some other Kind of existent, we have still two Principles, one referring directly to the substratum, the other merely exhibiting the relation of the Privation to other things. Enneads II,4,

Or we might say that the one concept defines the relation of substratum to what is not substratum, while that of Privation, in bringing out the indeterminateness of Matter, applies to the Matter in itself: but this still makes Privation and Matter two in reason though one in substratum. Enneads II,4,

The further question, therefore, is raised whether boundlessness and indetermination are things lodging in something other than themselves as a sort of attribute and whether Privation [or Negation of quality] is also an attribute residing in some separate substratum. Enneads II,4,

If Matter is to be kept as the unchanging substratum, we must keep it as Matter: that means – does it not? – that we must define it as a Potentiality and nothing more – or refute these considerations. Enneads: II V.

All, then, that is accident and not Act; all but what is Idea-form of the Reality; all that merely confers pattern; all this is Quality: qualities are characteristics and modes other than those constituting the substratum of a thing. Enneads: II VI.

For [in the case of an evil life] whether it is that the constitution of the man is such as to drive him down the troubled paths or whether [the fault is mental or spiritual in that] the desires have gained control, we are compelled to attribute the guilt to the substratum [something inferior to the highest principle in Man]. We would be naturally inclined to say that this substratum [the responsible source of evil] must be Matter and not, as our argument implies, the Reason-Principle; it would appear that not the Reason-Principle but Matter were the dominant, crude Matter at the extreme and then Matter as shaped in the realized man: but we must remember that to this free Principle in man [which is a phase of the All Soul] the Substratum [the direct inferior to be moulded] is [not Matter but] the Reason-Principle itself with whatever that produces and moulds to its own form, so that neither crude Matter nor Matter organized in our human total is sovereign within us. Enneads III,3,

Mirrors and transparent objects, even more, offer a close parallel; they are quite unaffected by what is seen in or through them: material things are reflections, and the Matter on which they appear is further from being affected than is a mirror. Heat and cold are present in Matter, but the Matter itself suffers no change of temperature: growing hot and growing cold have to do only with quality; a quality enters and brings the impassible Substance under a new state – though, by the way, research into nature may show that cold is nothing positive but an absence, a mere negation. The qualities come together into Matter, but in most cases they can have no action upon each other; certainly there can be none between those of unlike scope: what effect, for example, could fragrance have on sweetness or the colour-quality on the quality of form, any quality on another of some unrelated order? The illustration of the mirror may well indicate to us that a given substratum may contain something quite distinct from itself – even something standing to it as a direct contrary – and yet remain entirely unaffected by what is thus present to it or merged into it. Enneads III,6,

Further: If Matter were susceptible of modification, it must acquire something by the incoming of the new state; it will either adopt that state, or, at least, it will be in some way different from what it was. Now upon this first incoming quality suppose a second to supervene; the recipient is no longer Matter but a modification of Matter: this second quality, perhaps, departs, but it has acted and therefore leaves something of itself after it; the substratum is still further altered. This process proceeding, the substratum ends by becoming something quite different from Matter; it becomes a thing settled in many modes and many shapes; at once it is debarred from being the all-recipient; it will have closed the entry against many incomers. In other words, the Matter is no longer there: Matter is destructible. Enneads III,6,

Just as the Ideal Principles stand immutably in their essence – which consists precisely in their permanence – so, since the essence of Matter consists in its being Matter [the substratum to all material things] it must be permanent in this character; because it is Matter, it is immutable. In the Intellectual realm we have the immutable Idea; here we have Matter, itself similarly immutable. Enneads III,6,

Eliminate this Ideal-Form and the substratum ceases to be a thing of magnitude, or to appear so: the mass produced by the Idea was, let us suppose, a man or a horse; the horse-magnitude came upon the Matter when a horse was produced upon it; when the horse ceases to exist upon the Matter, the magnitude of the horse departs also. If we are told that the horse implies a certain determined bulk and that this bulk is a permanent thing, we answer that what is permanent in this case is not the magnitude of the horse but the magnitude of mass in general. That same Magnitude might be fire or earth; on their disappearance their particular magnitudes would disappear with them. Matter, then, can never take to itself either pattern or magnitude; if it did, it would no longer be able to turn from being fire, let us say, into being something else; it would become and be fire once for all. Enneads III,6,

It must at once, be at once something in the nature of unity and yet a notion compact of diversity, or a Kind, a Nature, that waits upon the Existents of that Other World, either associated with them or known in and upon them, they collectively being this Nature which, with all its unity, is yet diverse in power and essence. Considering this multifarious power, we declare it to be Essence in its relation to this sphere which is substratum or underlie to it; where we see life we think of it as Movement; where all is unvaried self-identity we call it Repose; and we know it as, at once, Difference and Identity when we recognize that all is unity with variety. Enneads III,7,

Accepting this as a true account of an eternal, a perdurable Existent – one which never turns to any Kind outside itself, that possesses life complete once for all, that has never received any accession, that is now receiving none and will never receive any – we have, with the statement of a perduring Being, the statement also of perdurance and of Eternity: perdurance is the corresponding state arising from the [divine] substratum and inherent in it; Eternity [the Principle as distinguished from the property of everlastingness] is that substratum carrying that state in manifestation. Enneads III,7,

Succession or repetition gives us Number – dyad, triad, etc. – and the extent traversed is a matter of Magnitude; thus we have Quantity of Movement – in the form of number, dyad, triad, decade, or in the form of extent apprehended in what we may call the amount of the Movement: but, the idea of Time we have not. That definite Quantity is merely something occurring within Time, for, otherwise Time is not everywhere but is something belonging to Movement which thus would be its substratum or basic-stuff: once more, then, we would be making Time identical with Movement; for the extent of Movement is not something outside it but is simply its continuousness, and we need not halt upon the difference between the momentary and the continuous, which is simply one of manner and degree. The extended movement and its extent are not Time; they are in Time. Those that explain Time as extent of Movement must mean not the extent of the movement itself but something which determines its extension, something with which the movement keeps pace in its course. But what this something is, we are not told; yet it is, clearly, Time, that in which all Movement proceeds. This is what our discussion has aimed at from the first: "What, essentially, is Time?" It comes to this: we ask "What is Time?" and we are answered, "Time is the extension of Movement in Time!" Enneads III,7,

Nor can it be in the body as in some substratum: anything in a substratum is a condition affecting that – a colour, a form – but the soul is a separate existence. Enneads IV,3,

None the less all entwines into a unity: and there is something wonderful in the agreement holding among these various things of varied source, even of sources frankly opposite; the secret lies in a variety within a unity. When by the standard of the better kind among things of process anything falls short – the reluctance of its material substratum having prevented its perfect shaping under idea – it may be thought of as being deficient in that noble element whose absence brings to shame: the thing is a blend, something due to the high beings, an alloy from the underlying nature, something added by the self. Enneads IV,4,

It must be borne in mind that all intellection rises in some principle and takes cognisance of an object. But a distinction is to be made: There is the intellection that remains within its place of origin; it has that source as substratum but becomes a sort of addition to it in that it is an activity of that source perfecting the potentiality there, not by producing anything but as being a completing power to the principle in which it inheres. There is also the intellection inbound with Being – Being’s very author – and this could not remain confined to the source since there it could produce nothing; it is a power to production; it produces therefore of its own motion and its act is Real-Being and there it has its dwelling. In this mode the intellection is identical with Being; even in its self-intellection no distinction is made save the logical distinction of thinker and thought with, as we have often observed, the implication of plurality. Enneads VI,7,