Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2 / In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods

by Plotinus

OBJECTION THAT MATTER MUST BE PASSIBLE IF ITS QUALITIES CHANGE AS THEY DO.

It may be objected that matter receives heat, cold, and numerous, or even innumerable qualities; it is characterized by them, it possesses them as somehow inherent in its nature, and mingled with each other, as they do not exist in isolated condition. How could nature avoid being affected along with them,[60] serving as it does as a medium for the mutual action of these qualities by their mixture?[61] If matter is to be considered impassible, we shall have to consider it as somehow outside of these qualities. But every quality which is present in a subject cannot be present in it without communicating to it something of itself.