distinction is borrowed from the most familiar fact in the sensible world—the form of solid objects. We may name a substance without troubling ourselves as to the form it possesses, and we may name the form without regard to the substance that it clothes. But this distinction is a purely abstract one, for there can be no real separation of form from matter, no form without matter, and no matter without form. The two terms are correlative; each one implies the other, and neither can be realised or actualised without the other. Every individual substance can be considered from a triple point of view: 1st, form; 2nd, matter; and 3rd, the compound or aggregate of form and matter, the inseparable Ens, which transports us out of the domain of logic and abstraction into that of reality.
Aristotle recognises between these two logical correlatives a difference in rank. Form is superior, nobler, the higher in dignity, nearer to the perfect entity; matter is inferior, more modest, more distant from perfection. On account of its hierarchical inferiority, matter is often presented as the second, or correlatum, and form as the first, or relatum. This difference in rank is so strongly marked, that these two correlations are likewise conceived in a different form—that of the potential and the actual. Matter is the potential, imperfect, roughly outlined element which is
