The Politics of Aristotle

by Aristotle

  Some bodies are combustible and some are not. Wood, wool, bone are combustible; stone, ice are not. Bodies are combustible when their pores are such as [20] to admit fire and their longitudinal pores contain moisture weaker than fire. If they have no moisture, or if, as in ice or very green wood, the moisture is stronger than fire, they are not combustible.

  Those bodies give off fumes which contain moisture, but in such a form that it does not go off separately in vapour when they are exposed to fire. For vapour is a [25] moist exhalation into air and wind produced from a liquid by the agency of burning heat. Bodies that give off fumes give off secretions of the nature of air by the lapse of time: as they perish away they dry up or become earth. But the kind of secretion we are concerned with now differs from others in that it is not moist nor does it become wind (which is a continuous flow of air in a given direction). Fumes are a common [30] secretion of dry and moist together caused by the agency of burning heat. Hence they do not moisten things but rather colour them.

  [387b1] The fumes of a woody body are called smoke. (I mean to include bones and hair and everything of this kind in the same class. For there is no name common to all the objects that I mean, but, for all that, these things are all in the same class by analogy. Compare with Empedocles says: ‘They are one and the same, hair and leaves and the thick wings of birds and scales that grow on stout limbs.’63) The [5] fumes of fat are a sooty smoke and those of oily substances a greasy steam. Oil does not boil away or thicken by evaporation because it does not give off vapour but fumes. Water on the other hand does not give off fumes, but vapour. Sweet wine does give off fumes, for it contains fat and behaves like oil. It does not solidify under [10] the influence of cold and it is apt to burn. Really it is not wine at all in spite of its name; for it does not taste like wine and consequently does not inebriate as ordinary wine does. It contains but little fumigable stuff and consequently is inflammable.

  All bodies are combustible that dissolve into ashes, and all bodies do this that solidify under the influence either of heat or of both heat and cold; for we find that [15] all these bodies are mastered by fire. Of stones the precious stone called carbuncle is least amenable to fire.

  Of combustible bodies some are inflammable and some are not, and some of the former are reduced to coals. Those are called inflammable which produce flame [20] and those which do not are called non-inflammable. Those fumigable bodies that are not liquid are inflammable, but pitch, oil, wax are inflammable in conjunction with other bodies rather than by themselves. Most inflammable are those bodies that give off smoke. Of bodies of this kind those that contain more earth than smoke are apt to be reduced to coals. Some bodies that can be melted are not inflammable, [25] e.g. copper; and some bodies that cannot be melted are inflammable, e.g. wood; and some bodies can be melted and are also inflammable, e.g. frankincense. The reason is that wood has its moisture all together and this is continuous throughout and so it burns up: whereas copper has it in each part but not continuous, and insufficient in quantity to give rise to flame. In frankincense it is disposed in both of these ways. [30] Fumigable bodies are inflammable when earth predominates in them and they are consequently such as to be unable to melt. These are inflammable because they are dry like fire. When this dry comes to be hot there is fire. This is why flame is [388a1] burning smoke or dry exhalation. The fumes of wood are smoke, those of wax and frankincense and such-like, and pitch and whatever contains pitch or such-like, are sooty smoke, while the fumes of oil and oily substances are a greasy steam; so are [5] those of all substances which are not at all combustible by themselves because there is too little of the dry in them (the dry being the means by which the transition to fire is effected), but burn very readily in conjunction with something else. (For the fat is just the conjunction of the oily with the dry.) So those bodies64 that give off fumes, like oil and pitch, belong rather to the moist, but those that burn to the dry.

  10 · Homogeneous bodies differ to touch by these affections and differences, [10] as we have said. They also differ in respect of their smell, taste, and colour.

  By homogeneous bodies I mean, for instance, the stuffs that are mined—gold, copper, silver, tin, iron, stone, and everything else of this kind and the bodies that [15] are extracted from them; also the substances found in animals and plants, for instance, flesh, bones, sinew, skin, viscera, hair, fibres, veins (these are the elements of which the non-homogeneous bodies like the face, a hand, a foot, and everything of [20] that kind are made up), and in plants, wood, bark, leaves, roots, and the rest like them.

  The homogeneous bodies, it is true, are constituted by a different cause, but the matter of which they are composed is the dry and the moist, that is, water and earth (for these bodies exhibit those qualities most clearly). The agents are the hot and the cold; for they constitute and make concrete the homogeneous bodies out of [25] earth and water. Let us consider, then, which of the homogeneous bodies are made of earth and which of water, and which of both.

  Of organized bodies some are liquid, some soft, some hard. The soft and the hard are constituted by a process of solidification,65 as we have already explained.

  Those liquids that go off in vapour are made of water, those that do not are [30] either of the nature of earth, or a mixture either of earth and water, like milk, or of earth and air, like wood, or of water and air, like oil. Those liquids which are thickened by heat are a mixture. (Wine is a liquid which raises a difficulty; for it is [388b1] both liable to evaporation and it also thickens; for instance new wine does. The reason is that there is more than one kind of liquid called wine and different kinds behave in different ways. New wine is more earthy than old, and for this reason it is more apt to be thickened by heat and less apt to be congealed by cold. For it [5] contains much heat and a great proportion of earth, as in Arcadia, where it is so dried up in its skins by the smoke that you scrape it to drink. If all wine has some sediment in it then it will belong to earth or to water according to the quantity of the sediment it possesses.) The liquids that are thickened by cold are of the nature of earth; those that are thickened either by heat or by cold consist of more than one [10] element, like oil and honey and sweet wine.

  Of solid bodies those that have been solidified by cold are of water, e.g. ice, snow, hail, hoar-frost. Those solidified by heat are of earth, e.g., pottery, cheese, natron, salt. Some bodies are solidified by both heat and cold. Of this kind are those solidified by refrigeration, that is by the privation both of heat and of the moisture [15] which departs with the heat. For salt and the bodies that are purely of earth solidify by privation of moisture only, ice by that of heat only, these bodies by that of both. So both the active qualities and both kinds of matter were involved in the process. Of these bodies those from which all the moisture has gone are all of them of earth, like pottery or amber. (For amber, also, and the bodies called ‘tears’ are formed by [20] refrigeration, like myrrh, frankincense, gum. Amber, too, appears to belong to this class of things: the animals enclosed in it show that it is formed by solidification. The heat is driven out of it by the cold of the river and causes the moisture to evaporate with it, as in the case of honey when it has been heated and is immersed in [25] water.) Some of these bodies cannot be melted or softened; for instance, amber and certain stones, e.g. the stalactites in caves. (For these stalactites, too, are formed in the same way: the agent is not fire, but cold which drives out the heat, which, as it leaves the body, draws out the moisture with it: in the other class of bodies the agent is external fire.) In those from which the moisture has not wholly gone earth still [30] preponderates, but they admit of softening by heat, e.g. iron and horn. (Frankincense and things of that sort give off vapour in the same way as wood does.)

  Now since we must include among meltables those bodies which are melted by fire, these contain some water; indeed some of them, like wax, are common to earth and water alike. But those that are melted by water are of earth. Those that are not [389a1] melted either by fire
or water are of earth, or of earth and water.

  Since, then, all bodies are either liquid or solid, and since the things that display the affections we have enumerated belong to these two classes and there is nothing intermediate, it follows that we have given a complete account of the criteria for distinguishing whether a body consists of earth or of water or of more [5] elements than one, and whether fire was the agent in its formation, or cold, or both.

  Gold, then, and silver and copper and tin and lead and glass and many nameless stones are of water; for they are all melted by heat. Of water, too, are some wines and urine and vinegar and lye and whey and serum; for they are all congealed [10] by cold. In iron, horn, nails, bones, sinews, wood, hair, leaves, bark, earth preponderates. So, too, in amber, myrrh, frankincense, and all the substances called ‘tears’, and stalactites, and fruits, such as leguminous plants, and corn. For things [15] of this kind are, to a greater or less degree, of earth. For of all these bodies some admit of softening by heat, the rest give off fumes and are formed by refrigeration. So again in natron, salt, and those kinds of stones that are not formed by refrigeration and cannot be melted. Blood, on the other hand, and semen are made up of earth and water and air. If the blood contains fibres, earth preponderates in it; [20] consequently it solidifies by refrigeration and is melted by liquids; if not, it is of water and therefore does not solidify. Semen solidifies by refrigeration, its moisture leaving it together with its heat.

  11 · We must investigate in the light of the results we have arrived at what [25] solid or liquid bodies are hot and what cold.

  Bodies consisting of water are commonly cold, unless (like lye, urine, wine) they contain foreign heat. Bodies consisting of earth, on the other hand, are commonly hot because heat was active in forming them: for instance lime and ashes.

  We must recognize that cold is in a sense the matter of bodies. For the dry and the moist are matter (being passive) and earth and water are the elements that [30] primarily embody them, and they are characterized by cold. Consequently cold must predominate in every body that consists of one or other of the elements simply, [389b1] unless such a body contains foreign heat as water does when it boils or when it has been strained through ashes. This latter, too, has acquired heat from the ashes; for everything that has been burnt contains more or less heat. This explains the generation of animals in putrefying bodies: the putrefying body contains the heat [5] which destroyed its proper heat.

  Bodies made up of earth and water are hot; for most of them derive their existence from concoction and heat, though some, like the waste products of the [10] body, are the products of putrefaction. Thus blood, semen, marrow, fig-juice, and all things of the kind are hot as long as they are in their natural state, but when they perish and fall away from that state they are so no longer. For what is left of them is their matter and what is earth or water. Hence both views are held about them, some people maintaining them to be cold and others to be warm; for they are observed to be hot when they are in their natural state, but to solidify when they [15] have fallen away from it. That, then, is the case of mixed bodies. However, the distinction we laid down holds good: if its matter is predominantly water a body is cold (water being the complete opposite of fire), but if earth or air it tends to be warm.

  It sometimes happens that the coldest bodies can be raised to the highest [20] temperature by foreign heat; for the most solid and the hardest bodies are coldest when deprived of heat and most burning after exposure to fire: thus water is more burning than smoke and stone than water.

  12 · Having explained all this we must describe the nature of flesh, bone, and the other homogeneous bodies severally.

  [25] Our account of the formation of the homogeneous bodies has given us the elements out of which they are compounded and the classes into which they fall, and has made it clear to which class each of those bodies belongs. The homogeneous bodies are made up of the elements, and all the works of nature in turn of the homogeneous bodies as matter. All the homogeneous bodies consist of the elements described, as matter, but their essence is determined by their definition. This fact is [30] always clearer in the case of the later products, of those, in fact, that are instruments, as it were, and have an end: it is clearer, for instance, that a dead man is a man only in name. And so the hand of a dead man, too, will in the same way be a [390a1] hand in name only, just as stone flutes might still be called flutes; for these too, seem to be instruments of a kind. But in the case of flesh and bone the fact is not so clear to see, and in that of fire and water even less. For the end is least obvious there [5] where matter predominates most. If you take the extremes, matter is pure matter and the essence is pure definition; but the bodies intermediate between the two are related to each in proportion as they are near to either. For each of these elements has an end and is not water or fire in any and every condition of itself, just as flesh is not flesh nor viscera viscera, and the same is true in a higher degree with face and [10] hand. What a thing is is always determined by its function: a thing really is itself when it can perform its function; an eye, for instance, when it can see. When a thing cannot do so it is that thing only in name, like a dead eye or one made of stone, just as a wooden saw is no more a saw than one in a picture. The same, then, is true of [15] flesh, except that its function is less clear than that of the tongue. So, too, with fire; but its function is perhaps even harder to specify by physical inquiry than that of flesh. The parts of plants, and inanimate bodies like copper and silver, are in the same case. They all are what they are in virtue of a certain power of action or passion—just like flesh and sinew. But we cannot state their definitions accurately, and so it is not easy to tell when they are really there and when they are not unless [20] the body is thoroughly corrupted and its shape only remains. So ancient corpses suddenly become ashes in the grave and very old fruit preserves its shape only but [390b1] not its sensible qualities; so, too, with the solids that form from milk.

  Now heat and cold and the motions they set up as the bodies are solidified by the hot and the cold are sufficient to form all such parts as are the homogeneous bodies, flesh, bone, hair, sinew, and the rest. For they are all of them differentiated [5] by the various qualities enumerated above, tension, ductility, fragmentability, hardness, softness, and the rest of them: all of which are derived from the hot and the cold and the mixture of their motions. But no one would go as far as to consider them sufficient in the case of the non-homogeneous parts (like the head, the hand, [10] or the foot) which these homogeneous parts go to make up. Cold and heat and their motion would be admitted to account for the formation of copper or silver, but not for that of a saw, a bowl, or a box. So here, save that in the examples given the cause is art, but in the non-homogeneous bodies nature or some other cause.

  Since, then, we know to what class each of the homogeneous bodies belongs, we [15] must now find the definition of each of them, i.e. what is blood, flesh, semen, and the rest? For we know the cause of a thing and its definition when we know its matter and its definition—and best when we know both the material and the formed factors of its generation and destruction, and also the source of the origin of its motion.

  After the homogeneous bodies have been explained we must consider the [20] non-homogeneous too, and lastly the bodies made up of these, such as man, plants, and the rest.

  **TEXT: F. H. Fobes, Cambridge, Mass., 1918

  1Reading κἀκείνoυς (Thurot) for κἀκεῖνoς.

  2Aἰθήρ being derived from ἀεί (always) and θεῖν (to run), with an allusion to θεῖoς (divine).

  3See On the Heavens 297b30ff.

  4No such account is to be found in On the Soul or Sense and Sensibilia.

  5Omitting τoῦ πυρòς ἄνω φερoμένoυ κατὰ φύσιν.

  6Omitting μᾶλλoν, and reading ἄνω for ἀνωτάτῳ.

  7In 373/2 B.C.

  8427/6 B.C.

  9Reading ἅμμα for ἅλμα.

  1
0341/0 B.C.

  11Omitting ἀέρα τε … πoιήσῃ.

  12Omitting πυρός.

  13Reading πληθύoυσι for πληθύoυσα.

  14Omitting γιγνόμενα.

  15Reading ἔλαττoν for ἐλάττω.

  16Retaining ταμιευoμένων.

  17Retaining ἥν.

  18Retaining ἀπαντᾷ.

  19Omitting ἄτoπoν.

  20Phaedo 111 Cff.

  21Omitting αἰτίας.

  22Omitting τήν.

  23Reading τινoς for τό.

  24Omitting δέ.

  25Placing καί after μαραίνει instead of before διακρίνει.

  26Webster thinks that this sentence is a learned—but irrelevant—interpolation.

  27Omitting ἐστιν.

  28Reading χίoνας for νoμάς.

  29Reading τῆξιν for πῆξιν.

  30Reading αὐτόν.

  31Omitting καὶ εὖρoς ꜏ ἀπηλιώτην.

  32Omitting ꜔ γὰρ ἀπαρκτίας ζέφυρός ἐστιν.

  33Transposing ἔξω and ἐκεῖ.

  34Reading μεγέθoυς. τὴν δὲ ζέσιν πoιεῖ.…

  35Reading μεταβάλλoυσι.

  36Reading ἐκκρινoμένη.

  37Reading τυφῶν ἄνεμoς, ὤν oἷoν.…

  38Punctuating after διηθηθέν.

  39Omitting ἐγγύτατα.

  40Omitting ἐφ’ ᾧ ‴ A.

  41Fobes excises this sentence.

  42Fobes excises this clause.

  43Reading α꜊ ἀπὸ τoῦ H καὶ K.

  44Reading HM.

  45Reading ꜑ πό.

  46This paragraph is out of place and textually odd: most editors regard it as an interpolation.

  47Reading ἐφ’ oὗ τὸ O.

  48Reading ψϒΩ.

  49Reading ꜑ πό.

  50Reading ϒΩ.