If the (Stoics) say that the "reasons" are only modified matter, they then admit that qualities are modes, and the (Stoics) should locate the reasons in the fourth category, of relation. If however relation be something different from modality, in what does that difference consist? Is it that modality here possesses greater reality? But if modality, taken in itself, be not a reality, why then make of it a category? Surely it would be impossible to gather in a single category both essence and non-essence. In what then does this modification of matter consist? It must be either essence or non-essence. If it be essence, it is necessarily incorporeal. If it be non-essence, it is nothing but a word, and matter alone exists. In this case, quality is nothing real, and modality still less. As to the fourth category, relation, absolutely no reality whatever will inhere in it. This Stoic system, therefore, contains nothing else but matter.
THE CULT OF MATTER IMPLIES IGNORING SOUL AND INTELLIGENCE.
But on whose authority do we learn this? Surely, not on that of matter itself, unless that, because of its modification, it becomes intelligence; but this (alleged) modification is but a meaningless addition; it must therefore be matter which perceives these things, and expresses them. If we should ask whether matter utter sensible things, we might indeed ask ourselves how matter thinks and fulfils the functions of the soul, although matter lacks both soul and intelligence. If, on the contrary, matter utter something nonsensical, insisting that it is what it is not, and what it could not be, to whom should this silly utterance be ascribed? Surely only to matter, if it could speak. But matter does not speak; and he who speaks thus does so only because he has borrowed much from matter, that he has become its slave, though he have a soul. The fact is that he is ignorant of himself, as well as of the nature of the faculty which can divulge the truth about this subject (intelligence).
3. MODALITY.
MODALITY SHOULD NOT OCCUPY EVEN THE THIRD RANK OF EXISTENCE.
30. It is absurd to assign the third rank to modalities, and even assign to them any place whatever; for all modalities refer to matter. It may however be objected to this that there are differences between the modalities; the various modifications that matter undergoes are not the same thing as the modalities; the qualities are doubtless modalities of matter, but the modalities, in the strict sense of the word, refer to qualities. (The answer to this is that) since the qualities are only modalities of matter, the technical modalities mentioned by the (Stoics) themselves reduce to matter, and necessarily relate thereto. In view of the many differences obtaining between them, how otherwise could modalities form a category? How could one reduce to a single classification the length of three feet, and whiteness—since one is a quantity, and the other a quality? How could time and place be reduced thereto? Besides, how would it be possible to consider as modalities such expressions as "yesterday," "formerly," "in the Lyceum," and, "in the Academy"? How could time be explained as a modality? Neither time, nor things which are in time, nor place, nor the things which are in place, could be modalities. How is "to act" a modality, since he who acts is not himself a modality, but rather acts within some modality, or even, acts simply? Nor is he who undergoes an experience any more of a modality; he experiences something rather in a modality, or rather, he undergoes some experience in such a manner. Modality rather suits the (Aristotelian) categories of situation and possession; and as to possession, no man even possesses "in such or such a modality," but possesses purely and simply.
4. RELATION; THE STOICS CONFUSE THE NEW WITH THE ANTERIOR.
31. If the Stoics did not, along with the other discussed categories, reduce relation to a common kind, there might be good grounds to examine whether they attributed substantial (or, hypostatic) reality to these manners of "being"; for often, they do not attribute to them any. But what is to be said of their confusing things new and anterior in one same classification? This is evidently an absurdity; for surely one and two must exist before the half or the double.
As to the philosophers (Plato, for instance), who have taught other opinions about essences and their principles, considered as finite or infinite, corporeal or incorporeal, or both simultaneously corporeal or incorporeal, we will examine each of these opinions separately, considering also the historic objections of the ancient (philosophers).