Page:A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy.djvu/414

356 extreme of perfection so is matter the extreme of imperfection and defect. As God is the source of good, so is matter the source of evil. How then can anyone suppose for a moment that an eternal formless matter can in any way be identified with a divine being?

Another objection that may be offered to our theory is that it is an established fact that matter cannot exist at all without any form, whereas our view assumes that an absolutely formless matter existed an infinite length of time before the world was made from it. This may be answered by saying that the impossibiUty of matter existing without form applies only to the actual objects of nature. God put in sublunar matter the nature and capacity of receiving all forms in a certain order. The primary qualities, the hot and the cold and the wet and the dry, as the forms of the elements, enable this matter to receive other higher forms. The very capacity of receiving a given form argues a certain form on the part of the matter having this capacity; for if it had no form there would be no reason why it should receive one form rather than another; whereas we find that the reception of forms is not at random, but that a given form comes from a definite other form. Man comes only from man. But this does not apply to the prime matter of which we are speaking. It may have been without form. Nay, it is reasonable to suppose that as we find matter and form combined, and we also find pure forms without matter, viz., in the separate Intelligences, — it is reasonable to suppose that there is also matter without form.

Finally one may ask if the world has not existed from eternity, what determined the author to will its existence at the time he did and not at another? We cannot say that he acquired new knowledge which he had not before, or that he needed the world then and not before, or that there was some obstacle which was removed. The answer to this would be that the sole cause of the creation was the will of God to benefit his creatures. Their existence is therefore due to the divine causality, which never changes. Their origin in time is due to the nature of a material object as such. A material object as being caused by an external agent is incompatible with eternity. It must have a beginning, and there is no sense in asking why at this time and not before or after, for the same question would apply to any other time. Gersonides cites other objections which he answers,