and does not get the length of a creator. So far as this criticism is concerned, we may undoubtedly say that all relation is form, and this implies that form is separated from matter. We can see that God’s activity would in this way be a finite one. When we produce anything technical we must take the material for it from the outside. Activity is thus limited and finite. Matter is thus thought of as permanently existing for itself, as eternal. That, in virtue of which things are brought into connection with each other, represents the qualities, the form, not the permanent existence of things as such. The subsistence or permanent existence of things is their matter. It is, to begin with, undoubtedly correct that the relations of things are included within their form; but the question is, Is this distinction, this separation between form and matter admissible, and can we thus put each specially by itself? It has been shown, on the contrary, in the Logic (Encyclop. Phil., § 129), that formless matter is a nonentity, a pure abstraction of the Understanding, which we may certainly construct, but which ought not to be given out to be anything true. The matter which is opposed to God as something unalterable is simply a product of reflection, or, to put it otherwise, this identity of formlessness, this continuous unity of matter is itself one of the specific qualities of form. We must therefore recognise the truth that matter which is thus placed on one side by itself, belongs itself to the other side, to form. But then the form is also identical with itself, relates itself to itself, and in virtue of this has just the very quality which is distinguished from it as matter. The activity of God Himself, His simple unity with Himself, the form, is matter. This remaining equal to self, this subsistence is present in the form in such a way that the latter relates itself to itself, and that is its subsistence, which is just what matter is. Thus the one does not exist apart from the other; on the contrary, they are both the same.
