11 



that the three following things * should be present. 

 In the first place, the body which yields to the 

 touch, and which is the subject of all generated 

 natures. But this will be an universal recipient, 

 and a signature of generation itself, having the 

 same relation to the things that are generated from 

 it, as water to taste, silence to sound f, darkness 

 to light, and the matter of artificial forms to the 

 forms themselves. For water is tasteless and de- 

 void of quality, yet is capable of receiving the sweet 

 and the bitter, the sharp and the salt. Air, also, 

 which is formless with respect to sound, is the re- 

 cipient of words and melody. And darkness, which 

 is without colour, and without form, becomes the 

 recipient of splendour, and of the yellow colour 

 and the white ; but whiteness pertains to the sta- 

 tuary's art, and to the art which fashions figures 

 from wax. Matter, however, has a relation in a 

 different manner to the statuary's art; for in matter 

 all things prior to generation are in capacity, but 



* Aristotle, in his treatise on Generation and Corruption, has 

 borrowed what Ocellus here says about the three things necessary 

 to generation. See my translation of that work. 



f* In the original, KUI -^otpos vgos fftyw, instead of which it is 

 necessary to read */ o-iyn vgog -^cxpov, conformably to the above 

 translation. See the Notes to my translation of the First Book of 

 Aristotle's Physics, p. 73, &c., in which the reader will find a 

 treasury of information from Simplicius concerning matter. But 

 as matter is devoid of all quality, and is a privation of all form, 

 the necessity of the above emendation is immediately obvious. 



