Chapter 27

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As to the word οὐσία, the reader may see the Index. I add here a few examples of the use of the word; Antoninus has (v. 24), ἡ συμπᾶσα οὐσία, “the universal substance.” He says (xii. 30 and iv. 40), “there is one common substance” οὐσία, distributed among countless bodies. In Stobaeus (tom. 1, lib. 1, tit. 14) there is this definition, οὐσίαν δέ φασίν τῶν ὄντων ἁπάντων τὴν πρώτην ὕλην. In viii. II, Antoninus speaks of τὸ οὐσίῶδες καὶ ὑλίκόν, “the substantial and the material;” and (vii. 10) he says that “everything material” (ἔνυλον) disappears in the substance of the whole (τῇ τῶν ὅλων οὐσία). The οὐσία is the generic name of that existence which we assume as the highest or ultimate, because we conceive no existence which can be coordinated with it and none above it. It is the philosopher’s “substance:” it is the ultimate expression for that which we conceive or suppose to be the basis, the being of a thing. “From the Divine, which is substance in itself, or the only and sole substance, all and everything that is created exists” (Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom, 198).