Chapter XXXIX.--These Latter Speculations Shown to Be Contradictory to the First Principles Respecting Matter, Formerly Laid Down by Hermogenes.
Well, now, since it seems to you to be the correcter thing, [6546] let Matter be circumscribed [6547] by means of changes and displacements; let it also be capable of comprehension, since (as you say) it is used as material by God, [6548] on the ground of its being convertible, mutable, and separable. For its changes, you say, show it to be inseparable. And here you have swerved from your own lines [6549] which you prescribed respecting the person of God when you laid down the rule that God made it not out of His own self, because it was not possible for Him to become divided [6550] seeing that He is eternal and abiding for ever, and therefore unchangeable and indivisible. Since Matter too is estimated by the same eternity, having neither beginning nor end, it will be unsusceptible of division, of change, for the same reason that God also is. Since it is associated with Him in the joint possession of eternity, it must needs share with Him also the powers, the laws, and the conditions of eternity. In like manner, when you say, "All things simultaneously throughout the universe [6551] possess portions of it, [6552] that so the whole may be ascertained from [6553] its parts," you of course mean to indicate those parts which were produced out of it, and which are now visible to us. How then is this possession (of Matter) by all things throughout the universe effected--that is, of course, from the very beginning [6554] --when the things which are now visible to us are different in their condition [6555] from what they were in the beginning?
[6546] Rectius.
[6547] Definitiva.
[6548] Ut quæ fabricatur, inquis, a Deo.
[6549] Lineis. Tertullian often refers to Hermogenes' profession of painting.
[6550] In partes venire.
[6551] Omnia ex omnibus.
[6552] i.e. of Matter.
[6553] Dinoscatur ex.
[6554] Utique ex pristinis.
[6555] Aliter habeant.
Chapter XL.--Shapeless Matter an Incongruous Origin for God's Beautiful Cosmos. Hermogenes Does Not Mend His Argument by Supposing that Only a Portion of Matter Was Used in the Creation.
You say that Matter was reformed for the better [6556] --from a worse condition, of course; and thus you would make the better a copy of the worse. Everything was in confusion, but now it is reduced to order; and would you also say, that out of order, disorder is produced? No one thing is the exact mirror [6557] of another thing; that is to say, it is not its co-equal. Nobody ever found himself in a barber's looking-glass look like an ass [6558] instead of a man; unless it be he who supposes that unformed and shapeless Matter answers to Matter which is now arranged and beautified in the fabric of the world. What is there now that is without form in the world, what was there once that was formed [6559] in Matter, that the world is the mirror of Matter? Since the world is known among the Greeks by a term denoting ornament, [6560] how can it present the image of unadorned [6561] Matter, in such a way that you can say the whole is known by its parts? To that whole will certainly belong even the portion which has not yet become formed; and you have already declared that the whole of Matter was not used as material in the creation. [6562] It follows, then, that this rude, and confused, and unarranged portion cannot be recognized in the polished, and distinct and well-arranged parts of creation, which indeed can hardly with propriety be called parts of Matter, since they have quitted [6563] its condition, by being separated from it in the transformation they have undergone.
[6556] In melius reformatam.
[6557] Speculum.
[6558] Mulus.
[6559] Speciatum: eidopoiethen, "arranged in specific forms."
[6560] Kosmos.
[6561] Inornatæ: unfurnished with forms of beauty.
[6562] Non totam eam fabricatam.
[6563] Recesserunt a forma ejus.
Chapter XLI.--Sundry Quotations from Hermogenes. Now Uncertain and Vague are His Speculations Respecting Motion in Matter, and the Material Qualities of Good and Evil.
I come back to the point of motion, [6564] that I may show how slippery you are at every step. Motion in Matter was disordered, and confused, and turbulent. This is why you apply to it the comparison of a boiler of hot water surging over. Now how is it, that in another passage another sort of motion is affirmed by you? For when you want to represent Matter as neither good nor evil, you say: "Matter, which is the substratum (of creation) [6565] possessing as it does motion in an equable impulse, [6566] tends in no very great degree either to good or to evil." Now if it had this equable impulse, it could not be turbulent, nor be like the boiling water of the caldron; it would rather be even and regular, oscillating indeed of its own accord between good and evil, but yet not prone or tending to either side. It would swing, as the phrase is, in a just and exact balance. Now this is not unrest; this is not turbulence or inconstancy; [6567] but rather the regularity, and evenness, and exactitude of a motion, inclining to neither side. If it oscillated this way and that way, and inclined rather to one particular side, it would plainly in that case merit the reproach of unevenness, and inequality, and turbulence. Moreover, although the motion of Matter was not prone either to good or to evil, it would still, of course, oscillate between good and evil; so that from this circumstance too it is obvious that Matter is contained within certain limits, [6568] because its motion, while prone to neither good nor evil, since it had no natural bent either way, oscillated from either between both, and therefore was contained within the limits of the two. But you, in fact, place both good and evil in a local habitation, [6569] when you assert that motion in Matter inclined to neither of them. For Matter which was local, [6570] when inclining neither hither nor thither, inclined not to the places in which good and evil were. But when you assign locality to good and evil, you make them corporeal by making them local, since those things which have local space must needs first have bodily substance. In fact, [6571] incorporeal things could not have any locality of their own except in a body, when they have access to a body. [6572] But when Matter inclined not to good and evil, it was as corporeal or local essences that it did not incline to them. You err, therefore, when you will have it that good and evil are substances. For you make substances of the things to which you assign locality; [6573] but you assign locality when you keep motion in Matter poised equally distant from both sides. [6574]
[6564] From which he has digressed since ch. xxxvi., p. 497.
[6565] Subjacens materia.
[6566] Æqualis momenti motum.
[6567] Passivitas.
[6568] Determinabilem.
[6569] In loco facis: "you localise."
[6570] In loco.
[6571] Denique.
[6572] Cum corpori accedunt: or, "when they are added to a body."
[6573] Loca: "places;" one to each.
[6574] Cum ab utraque regione suspendis: equally far from good and evil.