ARISTOTLE AND THE EARLIER PERIPATETICS vol.I by Eduard Zeller, B.F.C.Costelloe 1897

C
METAPHYSICS 359
•
is at once the passive subject of all impressions and the
cause of all blind operations unregulated by any purpose.
Matter alone can receive impressions, for all irdOos is a
process of determination, and nothing is
susceptible of
such a process but that which is not yet determined :
nothing, that is, but the indeterminate and therefore
determinable—in other words, nothing but Matter,
which can exhibit every activity and every quality,
for the simple reason that, taken in itself, it has no
quality or operative force. 1 But though Matter is
wholly devoid of any such active and positive force,
Aristotle nevertheless attributes to it
every obstruction
to the plastic energy exercised by Form. To what,
other source, indeed, could this be traced ? And so,
since Form always works with a purpose, it is in Matter
that we must seek the ground of all phenomena that
are independent of this final purpose and antagonistic to
it, the principle of blind natural necessity and chance.
The first of these obstructive forces is to be explained by
Nature's need of certain materials and the consequent dependence
of her creatures upon the same.
material element is in no sense efficient cause,
Though this
yet it is
an indispensable condition of the realisation of Nature's
ends. Though it is not necessary in itself, it is so conditionally
:
1
for if a certain particular being has to be pro-
Gen., et Corr. i. 7, 324, b, 4 : to TrA.ax*iv *