Ocellus Lucanus, Firmicus Maternus, Select Theorems of Proclus (Thomas Taylor)

that the three following things* should be present. In the first place, the body which yields to the touch, and which is the subject of all generated natures. This will be a universal recipient and a sign of generation itself, having the same relation to the things generated from it as water has to taste, silence to sound†, darkness to light, and the raw material of artificial forms to the forms themselves. For water is tasteless and devoid of quality, yet is capable of receiving the sweet and the bitter, the sharp and the salt. Air, also, which is formless with respect to sound, is the recipient of words and melody. And darkness, which is without color and without form, becomes the recipient of splendor, and of yellow and white colors; but whiteness pertains to the statuary’s art, and to the art which fashions figures from wax. Matter, however, has a different relation to the statuary’s art; for in matter, all things prior to generation exist in potentiality, but

• Aristotle, in his treatise on Generation and Corruption, has borrowed what Ocellus here says about the three things necessary to generation. See my translation of that work.

† In the original, the Greek reads "and sound to silence," instead of which it is necessary to read "and silence to sound," in accordance with the above translation. See the notes to my translation of the First Book of Aristotle's Physics, p. 73, etc., in which the reader will find a treasury of information from Simplicius concerning matter. But as matter is devoid of all quality and is a privation of all form, the necessity of the above correction is immediately obvious.