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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Matter

On matter.

1 ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩

Matter is what underlies every coming-to-be and passing-away, and all other changes.³⁶¹

2 Hermes, From the Discourses to Tat

Matter, my child, has both come to be and already existed: for matter is a vessel of coming-to-be, and coming-to-be is a mode of activity of the ungenerated god who exists beforehand. Receiving the seed of coming-to-be, therefore, matter came to be, became capable of change, and acquired forms as it was shaped. For she who fashions the forms of change presides over matter as it changes.³⁶² Matter’s ungenerated condition, then, was its lack of form; its coming-to-be was its being acted upon.³⁶³

3 ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: change and impassibility

Those in the lines of Thales and Pythagoras, by which I mean those extending down to the Stoics, together with Heraclitus, declared matter to be capable of transformation, alteration, and change, and fluid throughout its whole extent.

The followers of Democritus held the primary things, the atom and the void, to be unaffected.³⁶⁴

3 ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: Plato

Plato held matter to be body-like, without shape or form, unconfigured and without quality, so far as its own nature is concerned; but it becomes a receptacle of forms, and, as it were, a nurse, an impression-receiving medium, and a mother.³⁶⁵

3 Plato, Timaeus (50b-c), part 1

“The same account applies to the nature that receives all bodies: we must always call it the same, for it never departs at all from its own capacity. It always receives everything, and has never in any respect or manner taken a form like any of the things that enter it. By nature it lies ready as an impression-receiving medium for everything, moved and variously shaped by what enters it; because of these things it appears different at different times.³⁶⁶

3 Plato, Timaeus (50c-d), part 2

What enters and leaves consists of imitations of the things that always are, impressed from them in a manner difficult to describe and wonderful, which we shall pursue on another occasion. For the present, then, we ⟨must⟩ conceive three kinds: what comes to be; that in which it comes to be; and that after whose likeness what comes to be arises. It is fitting to compare what receives to a mother, the source of the likeness to a father, and the nature between them to an offspring.”³⁶⁷

4 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Aristotle, part 1

Aristotle. Now since nature, considered conceptually, is a certain principle of motion and rest, neither matter, according to its own definition, nor form is something moved. For matter is without form, whereas form is always form; matter is not a body, though it is corporeal, whereas form is altogether incorporeal.³⁶⁸ They say that matter is not a body, not only because it is held to lack the dimensions belonging to body, but because, according to its own definition, it also lacks many other things that bodies possess: shape, color, heaviness, lightness, and, in general, every quality and quantity.

4 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Aristotle, part 2

For if it shared in these, it ⟨would⟩ be among things having quality and quantity. But, considered in its definition as not sharing in them, it would not be a body; it would be corporeal because it underlies all qualities like an impression-receiving medium. Just as form, abstracted from matter, is incorporeal, so matter too, when form is separated from it, is not a body. For the conjunction of both is needed for a body to subsist.³⁶⁹

5a ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Zeno

Zeno. Substance is the primary matter of all existing things. This, taken as a whole, is eternal and becomes neither greater nor less; its parts, however, do not always remain the same, but are divided and blended together. Through it runs the rational principle of the universe, which some call fate, just as the seed runs through the generative fluid.³⁷⁰

5a ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Chrysippus

Chrysippus the Stoic. It is the primary matter of things that subsist with a quality. This is eternal, undergoing neither increase nor decrease, but admitting division and blending in its parts, so that some parts pass away into others [not] through division, while at the same time, correspondingly, some arise from others through blending.³⁷¹

5b ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩

Those who say that matter is water, fire, air, or earth no longer describe it as formless, but as a body; those who posit partless bodies and atoms describe it as formless.³⁷²

The Stoics declare matter to be a body.

5c ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Posidonius

Posidonius. Posidonius said that the substance and matter of the universe is without quality and without form, insofar as it has no determinate shape or quality of its own in itself; yet it is always in some shape and quality. Substance differs from matter in conception alone, being ⟨the same⟩ in underlying reality.³⁷³

6 Plato, Parmenides (144b-c)

“Being, then, has been distributed over all the many things that are, and is absent from none of them, neither the smallest nor the greatest? Or is it unreasonable even to ask this? For how could being be absent from anything that is?”

“In no way.”

“It has therefore been broken up into things as small and as great as possible, and of every sort, and has been divided more than anything else; the parts of being are unlimited.”

“That is so.”³⁷⁴

361.Hylē, “matter,” is defined by its role as what underlies change. The definition does not yet decide whether matter is itself a body, a question on which the later excerpts differ. Wachsmuth’s supplied Latin attribution to Aëtius is rendered in the headings.

362.The feminine subject, “she who fashions,” is not named in the printed Greek. The apparatus suggests supplying “fate,” but Wachsmuth does not insert it into the text. The translation therefore leaves the agent unnamed.

363.The opening paradox is explained by distinguishing matter’s prior formless condition from its acquisition of form. The closing passive energeisthai is rendered “being acted upon,” preserving its contrast with the god’s activity.

364.The report contrasts matter that changes throughout with first constituents that do not undergo change. Its broad grouping of thinkers belongs to the ancient compiler. Compare the account of indivisible bodies in I.10.14.

365.Sōmatoeidēs, “body-like,” is the reporter’s description. Ekmageion is a medium that receives impressions; “mold” can misleadingly suggest that it supplies a fixed shape of its own. The direct quotation from the Timaeus follows this summary.

366.The receptacle keeps its capacity to receive even while its appearances vary. The passage distinguishes having a fixed form of its own from being shaped by what enters it. The quotation continues in the next paired passage.

367.The analogy distinguishes the receptacle, the enduring pattern, and the generated likeness. The “father” here is the source of the likeness, not a new name introduced for the receptacle or for matter. The supplement chrē, “must,” is restored from Plato in the base edition.

368.This is a report under Aristotle’s name, not a direct quotation identified from one of his works. The distinction between “not a body” and “corporeal” is explained in the continuation: matter underlies bodily qualities but, considered apart from form, is not itself a constituted body. Wachsmuth supplies the attribution to Arius Didymus.

369.The contrast is between matter and form considered separately and the body constituted by their conjunction. “Abstracted” and “considered in its definition” preserve the passage’s conceptual distinctions without asserting that unformed matter is encountered as a separate physical object.

370.The account distinguishes the persistence of matter as a whole from changes in its parts. Logos is the rational principle pervading it; the seed analogy describes that principle’s presence and productive role. Compare I.10.16c, where the elements undergo a cycle of transformation.

371.“It” continues the definition of substance in the preceding report. The Greek sentence about division and blending has been textually repaired; the bracketed “not” is retained as a word rejected by Wachsmuth. Without it, division corresponds to passing-away and blending to coming-to-be. Neither changes the total amount of matter.

372.The condensed contrast uses “formless” without further explanation of its application to partless bodies and atoms. The final assertion that matter is a body should be kept distinct from the Aristotelian report in excerpt 4, where it is called corporeal but not a body.

373.“Without quality” does not here mean that matter is ever found entirely unqualified: the passage expressly says that it always has some shape and quality. The distinction concerns what belongs to it in itself. Hypostasis, rendered “underlying reality,” contrasts with epinoia, “conception.”

374.Ousia is translated “being” here, rather than “substance,” because the argument concerns what it is for anything to be. In the dialogue, this passage belongs to the deductions from the hypothesis that the one is (Parmenides 142b onward). Its placement under “Matter” does not make the passage itself a definition of physical matter.