MATTER IS BOTH WITHOUT QUALITIES AND EVIL.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plotinus and Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan
10. It may well be asked (by Stoics) how matter can be evil, as it is without quality?187 That matter possesses no qualities can be said in the sense that by itself it has none of the qualities it is to receive, or to which matter is to serve as substrate; but cannot be said in the sense that it will possess no nature. Now, if it have a nature, what hinders this nature from being bad, without this being bad being a quality? Nothing indeed is a quality but what serves to qualify something different from itself; a quality is, therefore, an accident; a quality is that which can be mentioned as the attribute of a subject other than itself.188 But matter is not the attribute of something alien; it is the subject to which accidents are related. Therefore, since every quality is an accident, matter, whose nature is not to be an accident, is without quality.189 If, besides, quality (taken in general), itself be without quality, how could one say of matter, so far as it has not yet received any quality, that it is in some manner qualified? It is, therefore, possible to assert of matter that, it both has no quality, and yet is evil. Matter is not evil because it has a quality, but just because it has none. If, indeed, matter possessed a form, it might indeed be bad; but it would not be a nature contrary to all form.