Note 31 — APHORISMS—BOOK I ON THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE AND THE EMPIRE OF MAN

Donec ad materiam potentialem et informem ventum fuerit. Nearly all the ancient philosophers admitted the existence of a certain primitive and shapeless matter as the substratum of things which the creative power had reduced to fixed proportions, and resolved into specific substances. The expression potential matter refers to that substance forming the basis of the Peripatetic system, which virtually contained all the forms that it was in the power of the efficient cause to draw out of it.—Ed.