The world as we know it, man, life itself as it works through all
creation, is the union of matter and spirit; and matter is not spirit,
nor spirit matter, nor is one a mode of the other, but they are two
different creatures. Apart from this union of matter and spirit there is
no life, in the sense in which we know it, and severance is death. "The
body" says St. Thomas, "is not of the essence of the soul; but the soul,
by the nature of its essence, can be united to the body, so that,
properly speaking, the soul alone is not the species, but the
composite", and Duns Scotus makes clear the nature and origin of this
common "essence" when he says there is "on the one hand God as Infinite
Actuality, on the other spiritual and corporeal substances possessing an
homogeneous common element." That is to say; matter and spirit are both
the result of the divine creative act, and though separate, and in a
sense opposed, find their point of origin in the Divine Actuality.

The created world is the concrete manifestation of matter, through
which, for its transformation and redemption, spirit is active in a
constant process of interpenetration whereby matter itself is being
eternally redeemed. What then is matter and what is spirit? The question
is of sufficient magnitude to absorb all the time assigned to these
lectures, with the strong possibility that even then we should be
scarcely wiser than before. For my own purposes, however, I am content
to accept the definition of matter formulated by Duns Scotus, which
takes over the earlier definition of Plotinus, purges it of its elements
of pagan error, and redeems it by Christian insight.

"Materia Primo Prima" says the great Franciscan, "is the indeterminate
element of contingent things. This does not exist in Nature, but it has
reality in so far as it constitutes the term of God's creative activity.
By its union with a substantial form it becomes endowed with the