Hylē

Hylē (ὕλη) means, in ordinary Greek, wood, timber, or forest — the raw lumber from which things are built. Aristotle borrowed this homely word to name one of the two principles of every physical thing: matter, the underlying stuff that receives shape, as bronze receives the form of a statue or wood the form of a bed. Strikingly, the Latin word that translates it, materia, also first meant 'timber' — the very same image carried into another tongue.

Pure potentiality

In Aristotle's analysis, matter is the partner of form: matter is what a thing is made of, form is what makes it that thing. Matter in itself is pure potentiality — it can become many things but is, in itself, none of them; it is form that gives it actuality and definition.

The edge of reality

The Neoplatonists gave matter a darker role. In the great procession from the One, matter is the last and lowest product, the point at which the outflow of being thins into near-nothingness — formless, indefinite, mere capacity to receive. Plotinus identified this utter privation of form and good with evil itself: not a positive power, but the shadow at the world's edge where the light gives out.