Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3 · Plutarch
CHAPTER IX. OF MATTER.
Matter is that first being which is substrate for generation, corruption, and all other alterations. The disciples of Thales and Pythagoras, with the Stoics, are of opinion that matter is changeable, mutable, convertible, and sliding through all things. The followers of Democritus aver that the vacuum, the atom, and the incorporeal substance are the first beings, and not obnoxious to passions. Aristotle and Plato affirm that matter is of that species which is corporeal, void of any form, species, figure, and quality, but apt to receive all forms, that she may be the nurse, the mother, and origin of all other beings. But they that do say that water, earth, air, and fire are matter do likewise say that matter cannot be without form, but conclude it is a body; but they that say that individual particles and atoms are matter do say that matter is without form. An idea is a being incorporeal, not subsisting by itself, but gives figure unto shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of its phenomena. Socrates and Plato conjecture that these ideas are beings separate from matter, subsisting in the understanding and imagination of the deity, that is, of mind. Aristotle accepted forms and ideas; but he doth not believe them separated from matter, or patterns of the things God has made. Those Stoics, that are of the school of Zeno, profess that ideas are nothing else but the conceptions of our own mind.
A cause is that by which anything is produced, or by which anything is effected. Plato gives this triple division of causes,--the material, the efficient, and the final cause; the principal cause he judges to be the efficient, which is the mind and intellect. Pythagoras and Aristotle judge the first causes are incorporeal beings, but those that are causes by accident or participation become corporeal substances; by this means the world is corporeal. The Stoics grant that all causes are corporeal, inasmuch as they are physical.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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