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. There are three possibilities: Matter is not in Privation and Privation is not in Matter; or each is in each; or each is in itself alone. Now if they should stand quite apart, neither calling for the other, they are two distinct things: Matter is something other than Privation even though Privation always goes with it: into the principle of the one, the other cannot enter even potentially. If their relation to each other is that of a snubnose to snubness, here also there is a double concept; we have two things. If they stand to each other as fire to heat- heat in fire, but fire not included in the concept of heat- if Matter is Privation in the way in which fire is heat, then the Privation is a form under which Matter appears but there remains a base distinct from the Privation and this base must be the Matter. Here, too, they are not one thing. Perhaps the identity in substance with differentiation in reason will be defended on the ground that Privation does not point to something present but precisely to an absence, to something absent, to the negation or lack of Real-being: the case would be like that of the affirmation of non-existence, where there is no real predication but simply a denial. 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. 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. Now if Matter possesses an identity- though only the identity of being indeterminate, unfixed and without quality- how can we bring it so under two principles?

For, whilst privation of good is partial, it is not, as yet, an evil, and when, it has become an accomplished fact, the nature of the evil has departe...

It is round earthly lives that this unorder doth exist. For that the bodies of the heavenly ones preserve one order allotted to them by the Father as...

For even it participates in ornament and beauty and form. But if matter, being without these, by itself is without quality and without form, how does ...

Hence, through these things such a corporeal-formed division as you introduce, is demonstrated to be false. It is, indeed, especially necessary not...

Now on the subject of a “Void,” —which seems to almost all a thing of vast importance,—I hold the following view. Naught is, naught could have been,...

But the philosophers, the Stoics, and Plato, and Pythagoras, nay more, Aristotle the Peripatetic, suppose the existence of matter among the first prin...

The deep Gate of Life.

The Bodhisattva Priyadarsana said: “Form (rupa) and voidness are a duality, (but) form is identical with voidness, which does not mean that form...

For every Creature looks but into its Mother that is fixed [or predominant] in it. The material Creature sees a material Substance, but an immaterial ...

To take familiar illustrations, we all recognize the fact that matter "exists" to our senses--we will fare badly if we do not. And yet, even our...

He is superior to the Totality in his privation and unknowability-- which is non-being Existence-- although he is endowed with silence and stillness...

In like way must we also talk concerning “Space,” —a term which by itself is void of “sense.” For Space seems what it is from that of which it is...

In addition to these things, also, how can the energies of a partible soul which is detained in body, become essence, and be by themselves separate...

After another manner, also, this doubt may be dissolved. For in men, indeed, who are detained in matter, bodies deprived of life produce a certain...

Now we have shown you the first Principle, out of which all Things take their Beginning; and must so speak of it, as if there was a Place, or a...

Are not these called independent of time, not by way of privation, but of diminution, as that which is sudden, not that which has taken place without...

In this Consideration you may find what I understand by a Principle. For a Principle is nothing else but a new Birth, a new Life: Besides, there is...

He is wide awake. And may we not say that the mind of the one who knows has knowledge, and that the mind of the other, who opines only, has opinion? C...

As has been frequently stated in this consideration of the First Aphorism, the state of Being of the Infinite and Absolute Reality—the Eternal...

Now if you consider what preserves all thus, and whence it is, then you find the eternal Birth that has no Beginning, and you find the Original of the...