3
Measure and Manifestation
The use of the word ‘matter’, except where modern conceptions are being specially examined, will henceforth be avoided for preference; and it must be understood that the reason for this lies in the confusions to which it inevitably gives rise, since it is impossible to use the word without at once evoking, even in those who are aware of the different meaning attached to the word by the scholastics, the idea of that which modern physicists call ‘matter’, for this last acceptation is the only one that holds good in current language. The idea in question, as we have seen, is not met with in any traditional doctrine whether it be Eastern or Western; this indicates at least that, even to the extent that it might legitimately be admitted after clearing it of certain incongruous and even flatly contradictory elements, it contains nothing that is really essential and is related only to one highly particularized way of looking at things. At the same time, since the idea is very recent, it cannot be implicit in the word itself, which is far older, so that the original meaning of the word must be quite independent of its modern meaning. It must however be admitted that the true etymological derivation of this word is very difficult to determine — as if a more or less impenetrable obscurity must inevitably envelop everything that has to do with ‘matter’ — and it is scarcely possible in this connection to do more than distinguish certain conceptions associated with its root; this will be by no means without interest, although it is impossible to specify exactly which of the various conceptions is the closest to the primitive meaning of the word.
The connection that seems to have been noticed most often is that which relates materia to mater, and this fits in well with the idea of substance as the passive principle and as symbolically feminine; it can be said that Prakriti plays the ‘maternal’ part in relation to manifestation and Purusha the ‘paternal’; and the same is true at all the levels at which a correlation of essence and substance can be envisaged analogically.[7] On the other hand, it is also possible to relate this same word materia to the Latin verb metiri ‘to measure’ (and it will appear later that there is in Sanskrit a form still closer to it): ‘measure’ however implies determination, and determination cannot be applied to the absolute indetermination of universal substance or the materia prima, but must rather be related to some other more restricted notion, a point we propose to now examine more closely.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy has said on this subject:
For everything that can be conceived or perceived (in the manifested world) Sanskrit has only the expression nāma-rūpa, the two terms of which correspond to the ‘intelligible’ and the ‘sensible’, considered as two complementary aspects referred respectively to the essence and to the substance of things.[8] It is true that the word mātra, which literally means ‘measure’, is the etymological equivalent of materia; but that which is thus ‘measured’ is not the physicists’ ‘matter’, it is the possibilities of manifestation inherent in the spirit (Ātmā).[9]
The idea of ‘measure’, brought in this way into direct relation with manifestation itself, is very important, and is moreover far from being peculiar to the Hindu tradition, which Coomaraswamy had particularly in view here. It can indeed truthfully be said that the idea is found in all the traditional doctrines in one form or another, and, while it is naturally impossible to attempt to enumerate all the relevant concordances that could be pointed out, enough can perhaps be said to justify this statement, and at the same time to clarify, as far as it is possible to do so, the symbolism of ‘measure’, which plays so important a part in certain initiatic forms.
Measure, understood in the literal sense, is principally concerned with the domain of continuous quantity, that is to say, it is concerned most directly with things that have a spatial character (for time, though no less continuous than space, can only be measured indirectly, by as it were attaching it to space through movement as intermediary, thus establishing a relation between the two). This amounts to saying that measure is specifically concerned either with extension itself, or with what is conventionally called the ‘matter of physics’, by reason of the character of extension that this last necessarily possesses: but this does not mean that the nature of matter can, as Descartes claimed, be reduced simply to extension and nothing more. In the first case, measure is correctly said to be ‘geometrical’; in the second case, it would more usually be called ‘physical’ in the ordinary sense of the word; but in reality the second case becomes merged in the first, for it is only by virtue of the fact that bodies are situated in extension and occupy a certain defined part of it that they are directly measurable, whereas their other properties are not susceptible of measurement, except to the degree that they can in some way be related to extension. We are at this point, as was foreseen, a long way from the materia prima, which in its absolute indistinction, can neither be measured in any way nor be used as a measure of anything else; but it is necessary to enquire whether the notion of measure be not more or less closely linked with whatever it is that constitutes the materia secunda of our world, and it turns out that a linkage exists through the fact that the materia secunda is signata quantitate. Indeed, if measure directly concerns extension and what is contained therein, it is only by the quantitative aspect of this extension that measure is made possible; but continuous quantity as such is, as explained, only a derived mode of quantity, that is to say it is only quantity by virtue of its participation in pure quantity, which in its turn is inherent in the materia secunda of the corporeal world; and besides, just because continuity is not pure quantity, measure always carries a certain degree of imperfection in its numerical expression, as the discontinuity of number makes a fully adequate application of number to the determination of continuous magnitudes impossible. Number is indeed the basis of all measurement, but, so long as number is considered by itself there can be no question of measurement, for measurement is the application of number to something else. An application of this kind is always possible within certain limits, but only after taking into account the ‘inadequacy’ just referred to, and this applies to everything subject to the quantitative condition, in other words, to everything belonging to the domain of corporeal manifestation. Only — and here the idea expressed by Coomaraswamy recurs — it must be most carefully noted that, despite certain prevalent misuses of ordinary language, quantity is never really that which is measured, it is on the contrary that by which things are measured; and furthermore, it can be said that the relation of measure to number corresponds, in an inversely analogical sense, to the relation of manifestation to its essential principle.
7
This also agrees well with the original meaning of the word ὕλη which was given above: the plant is so to speak the ‘mother’ of the fruit that comes forth from it and is nourished from its substance, but the fruit is only developed and ripened under the vivifying influence of the sun, the sun being thus in a sense its ‘father’; and as a result the fruit itself is symbolically assimilated to the sun by ‘co-essentiality’, if it be permissible to use this expression, as may also be understood by reference to explanations given elsewhere of the symbolism of the
8
These two terms, ‘intelligible’ and ‘sensible’, used in this way as correlatives, properly belong to the language of Plato; it is well known that the ‘intelligible world’ is for Plato the domain of ‘ideas’ or of ‘archetypes’, which, as we have seen, are actually essences in the proper sense of the word; and, in relation to this intelligible world, the sensible world, which is the domain of corporeal elements and proceeds from their combinations, is situated on the substantial side of manifestation.