BEING CANNOT BE ASCRIBED TO MATTER, WHICH DERIVES ITS BEING FROM THE INTELLIGIBLE.
7. If somebody should object that material things derive their essence from matter, we should have to ask from whence matter itself draws its essence and existence; for we have elsewhere demonstrated that matter does not hold the first rank.[367]
If, however, it be further objected, that the other things could not exist without being in matter, we will answer that that is true only for sense-things. But if matter be anterior to sense-things, that does not hinder itself being posterior to many other things, and to all intelligible things; for the existence of matter is far more obscure than the things in matter, if these things be ("seminal) reasons," which participate deeper in essence, while matter is completely irrational, being an adumbration, and a decay of reason.[368]
It may further be objected that matter gives essence to material things, as Socrates gives essence to the white that is in him. We will answer that what possesses a superior degree of Essence may well confer a lesser degree of essence to what possesses a still inferior degree thereof, but that the reciprocal or converse condition is impossible. Now, as form is more essence than matter,[369] essence cannot be predicated equally of matter and form, and "being" is not a genus whose species is matter, form and the combination.[370] These three things have several common characteristics, as we have already said, but they differ in respect to essence; for when something which possesses a superior degree of essence approaches something which possesses an inferior degree (as when form approaches matter), this thing, although anterior in (the ontological) order, is posterior in respect to being; consequently, if matter, form and the combination be not "beings" equally, no longer is being for them something common, like a genus. Nevertheless, "being" will be in a less narrow relation with things which are posterior to matter, to form, and to the combination, though it gives each of them the property of belonging to themselves. It is thus that life has different degrees, one stronger, the other weaker, and that the images of a same object are some more lively, others more obscure.[371] If essence be measured by a lower degree of essence, and if the superior degree which exists in other things be omitted, essence thus considered will be a common element. But that is not a good way of procedure. Indeed, each whole differs from the others, and the lesser degree of essence does not constitute something that was common to all; just as, for life, there is not something common to vegetative life, to sensitive life, and rational life.[371]