things. But these forms and qualities always appear only as the properties and manifestations of that very matter the existence and nature of which depends upon the subjective forms of our intellect, i.e., they only become visible in it, and therefore by means of it. For that which always exhibits itself to us is only matter acting in some specially determined manner. Out of the inner properties of such matter, properties which cannot be further explained, proceeds every definite kind of effect of given bodies; and yet the matter itself is never perceived, but only these effects, and the definite properties which lie at their foundation, after separating which, matter, as that which then remains over, is necessarily added in thought by us; for, according to the exposition given above, it is objectified causality itself. Accordingly matter is that whereby the will, which constitutes the inner nature of things, becomes capable of being apprehended, perceptible, visible. In this sense, then, matter is simply the visibility of the will, or the bond between the world as will and the world as idea. It belongs to the latter inasmuch as it is the product of the functions of the intellect, to the former inasmuch as that which manifests itself in all material existences, i.e., phenomena is the will. Therefore every object is, as thing in itself, will, arid as phenomenon, matter. If we could strip any given matter of all the properties that come to it a priori, i.e., of all the forms of our perception and apprehension, we would have left the thing in itself, that which, by means of those forms, appears as the purely empirical in matter, but which would then itself no longer appear as something extended and active; i.e., we would no longer have matter before us, but the will. This very thing in itself, or the will, in that it becomes a phenomenon, i.e., enters the forms of our intellect, appears as matter, i.e., as the invisible but necessarily assumed supporter of the properties which are only visible through it. In this sense, then, matter is the visibility of the will. Consequently Plotinus and Giordano Bruno
