And let us speak first of Matter. This then he calls a mould, that receives every impression, and a nurse, and a mother, and a space, and a thing subjective and tangible, (and) without sensation, and to be apprehended by spurious reasoning ; and that it possesses a peculiarity of such a kind, that it receives all creations, and has the reputation of a nurse by nourishing them, and admits all forms, being itself without Figure, and Quality, and Species, but moulded into such, and fashioned, as if it were a mould, and put into a form by them, possessing no peculiar figure or quality. For there would not be any thing properly prepared for various configurations and forms, unless it were itself without Quality, and not partaking of these species, which it must receive. For we see that those, who prepare sweet-smelling ointments from oil, make use of the most sweet-scented ; and those, who are desirous of fabricating figures from wax or clay, smooth down those substances, and render them shapeless in order that they may receive (new shapes)... and being such, it would be neither a body nor without a body, but a body in posse, as we understand of copper, that it is a statue in posse, because, after having received the form, it will become a statue. — Alcinous, *Handbook*, Ch. 8, trans. George Burges (1854) **Surface Gloss:** Primary Matter is the utterly formless, qualityless receptacle and space that receives all physical shapes. Like odorless base oil used by perfumers or smoothed-down wax, it must lack every quality of its own so it can take on any form, existing as body only potentially (*in posse*). *(Note: Burges’s text prints "most sweet-scented" where his footnote corrects the Greek to "most without scent.")* The **Perfumer’s Base Rule**: a medium’s capacity to accurately host, transmit, or adapt to diverse signals is inversely proportional to how much "native scent" (rigid bias, pre-baked style, or structural baggage) it carries. When building a platform, a research protocol, or a listening posture, ruthlessly strip out pre-existing shapes ("erase the former figures") until the substrate is neutral enough to register incoming reality without tainting it.
— In our words · Source: Handbook of Platonism (Alcinous)