If the unformed matter of S. Augustine is matter without shape and without extension, we can easily understand why he calls it _pene nullam rem_, viz., scarcely more than nothing.[30] Indeed, the potential term of a primitive element, a simple point in space, is scarcely more than nothing; for it has no bulk, and were it not for the act which gives it existence, it would be nothing at all, as it has nothing in itself and in its potential nature which deserves the name of “being”; but it borrows all its being from the substantial act, as we shall explain later on. It is, therefore, plain that the matter of a simple element, and of all simple elements, is hardly more than nothing, and that it might almost be described as a _nothing-something_, and a _being non-being_, as S. Augustine observes. But when the primitive matter began to cluster into bodies having bulk and composition, then this same matter acquired a _visible form_ under definite dimensions, and thus one mass of matter became distinguishable from another, and by the arrangement of such distinct material things the order and beauty of the world were produced. Thus S. Augustine did not admit the existence of matter deprived of a substantial form, but only the existence of matter without shape, and therefore without extension. And for this reason we have said that his doctrine contains more truth than is commonly believed by the peripatetic writers. His _uncompounded_ matter can mean nothing else than simple elements; and since the components are the material cause of the compound, and must be presupposed to it, the simple elements of which all bodies consist are undoubtedly those material beings which God must have created before anything having shape and material composition could make its appearance in the world. Hence S. Augustine’s view of creation is, in this respect, perfectly consistent with sound philosophy no less than with revelation. His shapeless matter must be ranked, we think, with the first matter of Suarez above mentioned, under the name of _primitive_ material substance. As to the first matter of S. Thomas and of the other followers of Aristotle, it is difficult to say what it is; for we have seen that it has been understood in two different manners. If we adopt its most received definition, we must call it “a pure potency” and “a first potency.” According to this definition, the first matter is a non-entity, as we have already remarked, and has no part in the constitution of substance, any more than a corpse in the constitution of man; for, as the body of man is not _a living corpse_, so the matter in material substance is not _a pure potency in act_, both expressions implying a like contradiction. Hence the first matter, according to this definition, is not a metaphysical being, but a mere being of reason--that is, a conception of nothingness as resulting from the suppression of the formal principle of being.