MATTER CANNOT BE THE PRIMARY PRINCIPLE.
26. What is most shocking in the Stoic doctrine, is that they assign the first rank to what is only a potentiality, matter, instead of placing actualization before potentiality.[285] It is impossible for the potential to pass to actualization if the potential occupy the first rank among beings. Indeed, the potential could never improve itself; and it implies the necessary anteriority of actualization; in which case potentiality is no longer a principle. Or, if it be insisted that actualization and potentiality must be simultaneous, both principles will be found depending on chance. Besides, even if actualization be contemporaneous with potentiality, why should not the first rank be assigned to actualization? Why should this (matter) be an essence, rather than those (forms)? Whoever asserts that form is posterior bears the burden of proof; for matter does not beget form, and quality could not arise from what has no quality; nor actualization from what is potential; otherwise, actualization would have existed anteriorly, even in the system of the Stoics. According to them, even God is no longer simple: He is posterior to matter; for He is a body constituted by form and matter.[286] Whence then does He derive His form? If the divinity exist without matter, He is incorporeal, by virtue of His being principle and reason, and the active principle would thus be incorporeal. If, even without having matter, the divinity be composite in essence, by virtue of His body, the Stoics will have to postulate some other kind of matter which may better suit the divinity.
MATTER IS NOT A BODY "WITHOUT QUALITY, BUT WITH MAGNITUDE" (A STOIC DEFINITION).
Besides, how could matter be the first Principle, if it be a body? If the body of which the Stoics speak be of another nature, then matter can be called a body only figuratively.[287] If they say that the common property of the body is to have three dimensions, they are speaking of the mathematical body. If on the contrary they join impenetrability to the three dimensions, they are no more talking about something simple. Besides, impenetrability is a quality, or is derived from a quality; but what is the source of impenetrability? Whence comes tri-dimensional extension? Who endued matter with extension? Matter, indeed, is not contained in the idea of tri-dimensional extension any more than the latter is contained in the notion of matter. Consequently, since matter thus participates in size,[288] it is no longer a "simple" matter.
ABSOLUTE EXISTENCE PRECEDES CONTINGENT EXISTENCE.
Moreover, whence is derived the unification of matter? Matter is not unity, but it participates in unity. They would have had to realize that the material mass is not anterior to everything, and that the first rank pertains to what is not one mass, to Unity itself. Then they would have to descend from Unity to multiplicity, from what is size-less to actual sizes; since, if size be one, it is not because it is Unity itself, but only because it participates in unity. We must therefore recognize that what possesses primary and absolute existence is anterior to what exists contingently. But how does contingency itself exist? What is its mode of existence? If the Stoics had examined this point, they would have finally hit upon (the absolute Unity) which is not unity merely contingently. By this expression is here meant what is not one by itself, but by others.
THE STOIC GOD IS ONLY MODIFIED MATTER.
27. The Stoics did well, indeed, to assign the principle of everything to the first rank; but they should not have recognized as principle, and accepted as "being" what was shapeless, passive, devoid of life and intelligence, dark, and indefinite. Because of the universe's beauty, they are forced to introduce within it a divinity; but the latter derives His very essence from matter; He is composite and posterior (to matter); rather, He is no more than "modified matter."[288] Consequently, if matter be the subject, there must necessarily be outside of it some other principle which, acting upon matter, makes of it the subject of the qualities which He imparts thereto. If this principle resided in matter, and Himself were the subject; if, in other words, He were contemporaneous with matter, He could not reduce matter to the state of a subject. Now it is entirely impossible (for this principle) to constitute a subject concurrently with matter; for in such a case both would have to serve as subject to something higher; and what could it be, since there could be no further principle to make a subject of them, if all things had already been absorbed into this (concurrent) subject? A subject is necessarily subject to something; not to what it has in itself, but to that whose action it undergoes. Now, it undergoes the action of that which itself is not subject by itself; consequently, of that which is outside of itself. This point has evidently been overlooked by the Stoics.
IF EVERYTHING BE DERIVED FROM MATTER, MATTER CAN NO LONGER BE THEIR SUBJECT.
On the other hand, if matter and the active principle need nothing exterior, if the subject that they constitute can itself become all things by assuming different forms, as a dancer, who can assume all possible attitudes, this subject would no longer be a subject, but He will be all things. Just as the dancer is not the subject of the attitudes (for they are his actualizations), likewise the "matter" of the Stoics will no longer be the subject of all things, if all things proceed from matter; or rather, the other things will no longer really exist, they will be nothing but "modified matter," just as the attitudes are nothing but the "modified dancer." Now if the other things no longer really exist, matter is no longer a subject; it is no longer the matter of the essences, but is matter exclusively. It will no longer even be matter, because what is matter must be matter of something; but that which refers to something else belongs to the same classification as that thing, just as half belongs to the same classification as the double, and is not the being of the double. But how could non-essence, except by accident, refer to essence? But the absolute Essence and matter itself refer to essence by virtue of being essence. Now if that which is to be is a simple potentiality, it cannot constitute "being," which consequently matter could not be.[289]