10. But how can I form the conception of the sizelessness of Matter?
How do you form the concept of any absence of quality? What is the Act of the Intellect, what is the mental approach, in such a case?
The secret is Indetermination.
Likeness knows its like: the indeterminate knows the indeterminate. Around this indefinite a definite conception will be realized, but the way lies through indefiniteness.
All knowledge comes by Reason and the Intellectual Act; in this case Reason conveys information in any account it gives, but the act which aims at being intellectual is, here, not intellection but rather its failure: therefore the representation of Matter must be spurious, unreal, something sprung of the Alien, of the unreal, and bound up with the alien reason.
This is Plato’s meaning where he says that Matter is apprehended by a sort of spurious reasoning.
What, then, is this indetermination in the Soul? Does it amount to an utter absence of Knowledge, as if the Soul or Mind had withdrawn?
Plotinus Resources OnLine and in Print
