13. Are we asked to accept as the substratum some attribute or quality present to all the elements in common?
Then, first, we must be told what precise attribute this is and, next, how an attribute can be a substratum.
The elements are sizeless, and how conceive an attribute where there is neither base nor bulk?
Again, if the quality possesses determination, it is not Matter the undetermined; and anything without determination is not a quality but is the substratum — the very Matter we are seeking.
It may be suggested that perhaps this absence of quality means simply that, of its own nature, it has no participation in any of the set and familiar properties, but takes quality by this very non-participation, holding thus an absolutely individual character, marked off from everything else, being as it were the negation of those others. Deprivation, we will be told, comports quality: a blind man has the quality of his lack of sight. If then — it will be urged — Matter exhibits such a negation, surely it has a quality, all the more so, assuming any deprivation to be a quality, in that here the deprivation is all comprehensive.
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