80 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



qualities, he thought, might be reduced to the four elements of fire, 

 air, water, and earth ; the two first he considered as active, the two 

 latter as passive elements. But even in these, again, he seemed to 

 find certain common properties, till by a further analysis he arrived at 

 some original and primeval thing, 1 which, itself destitute of all quali- 

 ties, might yet serve as a groundwork or common vinculum for all 

 qualities. This universal recipient and primary component, which is 

 indefinable except by negatives, is what was afterwards by Aristotle 

 termed v\r}, and is with us in general called matter. 



Matter This matter he seems to have considered as eternal and self- 



existent ; and that an eternal mind reduced those ingredients, which 

 afterwards constituted qualities, and which were originally inordinate, 

 by his sovereign will into system and harmony. Creation, therefore, 

 was in his view the organisation by mind of an elementary chaos ; and 

 he considered the power of the Supreme Being over matter as not 

 entirely absolute, but as limited in some degree by the perverseness or 

 resisting nature of the subject to be actuated. And whether we are 

 to attribute the supposition to some irregularities or occasional devia- 

 tions, which the ancient philosophers imagined in the motion of the hea- 

 venly bodies, or to whatever other cause we are to impute the singular 

 position, so it is that Plato held the inherent and permanent stub- 

 bornness of matter to be such, that at stated and periodic intervals the 

 Supreme Being intermitted his regular and progressive agency, and 

 the sphere of the universe revolved in a retrograde motion, until the 

 excess of unruliness was exhausted, and the system had reverted to a 

 point where it could resume its orderly obedience, and again revolve 

 in subjection to its mighty Ruler. 2 



Essences and In uniting essences with fleeting accidents, Plato found great diffi- 

 ;nts> culty iu reconciling such opposite subjects, and therefore devised a 

 medium, which he described as being neither uniform in its nature, 

 like the one, nor incapable of permanence, like the other, but in some 

 respect compound and stable. It is very difficult to collect what 

 Plato meant by these intermediate or connecting materials. And it 

 may, perhaps, rather obscure than elucidate the subject to remark, 

 that in many passages of Plato, 3 and in some of Aristotle, 4 connected 



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 s. Aristotel. Metaphys. lib. i. c. 6. 



