Timaeus
The Receptacle (49a)
Timaeus: and the second as the model's Copy, subject to becoming and visible. A third kind we did not at that time distinguish, considering that those two were sufficient; but now the argument seems to compel us to try to reveal by words a Form that is baffling and obscure. What essential property, then, are we to conceive it to possess? This in particular,—that it should be the receptacle, and as it were the nurse, of all Becoming. Yet true though this statement is, we must needs describe it more plainly.
Matter in Its Two Kinds (4)
The present existence of the Ideal-Forms has been demonstrated elsewhere: we take up our argument from that point. If, then, there is more than one...
(4) The present existence of the Ideal-Forms has been demonstrated elsewhere: we take up our argument from that point.
If, then, there is more than one of such forming Ideas, there must of necessity be some character common to all and equally some peculiar character in each keeping them distinct.
This peculiar characteristic, this distinguishing difference, is the individual shape. But if shape, then there is the shaped, that in which the difference is lodged.
There is, therefore, a Matter accepting the shape, a permanent substratum.
Further, admitting that there is an Intelligible Realm beyond, of which this world is an image, then, since this world-compound is based on Matter, there must be Matter there also.
And how can you predicate an ordered system without thinking of form, and how think of form apart from the notion of something in which the form is lodged?
No doubt that Realm is, in the strict fact, utterly without parts, but in some sense there is part there too. And in so far as these parts are really separate from each other, any such division and difference can be no other than a condition of Matter, of a something divided and differentiated: in so far as that realm, though without parts, yet consists of a variety of entities, these diverse entities, residing in a unity of which they are variations, reside in a Matter; for this unity, since it is also a diversity, must be conceived of as varied and multiform; it must have been shapeless before it took the form in which variation occurs. For if we abstract from the Intellectual-Principle the variety and the particular shapes, the Reason-Principles and the Thoughts, what precedes these was something shapeless and undetermined, nothing of what is actually present there.
Matter in Its Two Kinds (6)
We are led thus to the question of receptivity in things of body. An additional proof that bodies must have some substratum different from themselves...
(6) We are led thus to the question of receptivity in things of body.
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.
The same fact is clearly established by decay, a process implying a compound object; where there is decay there is a distinction between Matter and Form.
And the reasoning which shows the destructible to be a compound is borne out by practical examples of reduction: a drinking vessel is reduced to its gold, the gold to liquid; analogy forces us to believe that the liquid too is reducible.
The basic-constituents of things must be either their Form-Idea or that Primal Matter or a compound of the Form and Matter.
Form-Idea, pure and simple, they cannot be: for without Matter how could things stand in their mass and magnitude?
Neither can they be that Primal Matter, for they are not indestructible.
They must, therefore, consist of Matter and Form-Idea- Form for quality and shape, Matter for the base, indeterminate as being other than Idea.