 Like Aristotle and other Aristotelians both before and after him, Avicenna is convinced that bodies are constituted of matter and form. If one considers just body as such, that is, disregarding any specific kind of body it might be, then this absolute body, Avicenna tells us, is a composite of matter (hayūlā) and the form of corporeality (ṣūra jismiyya). Avicenna conceives matter as wholly passive, having no active qualities or features. (For discussion’s of Avicenna theory of matter see Hyman 1965; Buschmann 1979; Stone 2001; McGinnis 2012; but also see Lammer 2018, §3.2 for corrections of some of these earlier views.) In fact, Avicennan matter has no positive characterizations of its own at all by which it can be defined; rather, for Avicenna, matter is best understood solely in relation to the forms by which it is actualized and informed. Avicenna’s matter, then, is intimately linked with relative privation (ʿadam), that is, some lack, which under the right conditions can be realized. Given matter’s essentially privative character, it, then, cannot be the explanation for a sensible body’s having the positive characteristics of being unified and one, nor the cause of that body’s being extended so as to be subject to division. Instead, according to Avicenna, what makes a body a unified whole and subject to division is its form of corporeality. 