ETERNAL MATTER EXISTS ONLY POTENTIALLY.
Therefore, if matter were to be retained as unchangeable, it would be first necessary to retain it as matter; evidently, it will be necessary to insist that it exists only potentially, so that it may remain what it essentially is; the only alternative would be to refute the arguments we have advanced.
[THIRD ENNEAD, BOOK SIXTH.]
Of the Impassibility of Incorporeal Entities (Soul and and Matter).
A. OF THE SOUL.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PASSIBILITY OF JUDGMENT AND THE SOUL.
1. Sensations are not affections,[25] but actualizations, and judgments, relative to passions. The affections occur in what is other (than the soul); that is, in the organized body, and the judgment in the soul. For if the judgment were an affection, it would itself presuppose another judgment, and so on to infinity.[26] Though accepting this statement, we must, nevertheless, examine whether the judgment itself, as such, in nowise participates in the nature of its object; for if it receive the impression thereof,[27] it is passive. Besides, the "images derived from the senses"—to use the popular language—are formed in a manner entirely different from what is generally believed. They are in the same case as the intellectual conceptions, which are actualizations, and through which, without being affected, we know objects. In general, neither our reason nor our will permit us, in any way, to attribute to the soul modifications and changes such as the heating or cooling of bodies. Further, we have to consider whether that part of the soul, that is called the passive (or affective, or irrational), must also be be considered as unalterable, or as being affectible. But we will take up this question later; we must begin by solving our earlier problems.