The Politics of Aristotle

by Aristotle

  But these theories are untenable. Firstly, they state only what is the common element in both operations and so leave out the half of the matter. For what goes by the name of respiration consists, on the one hand, of inhalation, and, on the other, of the exhalation of breath; but, about the latter they say nothing, nor do they describe [10] how such animals emit their breath. Indeed, explanation is for them impossible for, when the creatures respire, they must discharge their breath by the same passage as that by which they draw it in, and this must happen in alternation. Hence, as a result, they must take the water into their mouth at the same time as they breathe out. But the air and the water must meet and obstruct each other. Further, when [15] they discharge the water they must emit their breath by the mouth or the gills, and the result will be that they will breathe in and breathe out at the same time, for it is at that moment that respiration is said to occur. But it is impossible that they should do both at the same time. Hence, if respiring creatures must both exhale and inhale the air, and if none of these animals can breathe out, evidently none can respire at all.

  [20] 9(3) · Further, the assertion that they draw in air out of the mouth or out of the water by means of the mouth is an impossibility, for, not having a lung, they have no windpipe; rather the stomach is closely juxtaposed to the mouth, so that they must do the sucking with the stomach. But in that case the other animals would do so also, which is not the truth; and the water-animals also would be seen to do it [25] when out of the water, whereas quite evidently they do not. Further, in all animals that respire and draw breath there is to be observed a certain motion in the part of the body which draws in the air, but in the fishes this does not occur. Fishes do not appear to move any of the parts in the region of the stomach, except the gills alone, [30] and these move both when they are in the water and when they are thrown on to dry land and gasp. Moreover, always when respiring animals are killed by being [471b1] suffocated in water, bubbles are formed of the air which is forcibly discharged, as happens, e.g. when one forces a tortoise or a frog or any other animal of a similar class to stay beneath water. But with fishes this result never occurs, in whatsoever way we try to obtain it, since they do not contain air drawn from an external source. [5] Again, the manner of respiration said to exist in them might occur in the case of men also when they are under water. For if fishes draw in air out of the surrounding water by means of their mouth why should not men too and other animals do so?—they should also, in the same way as fishes, draw in air out of the mouth. If in [10] the former case it were possible, so also should it be in the latter. But, since in the one it is not so, neither does it occur in the other. Furthermore, why do fishes, if they respire, die in the air and gasp (as can be seen) as in suffocation? It is not want of [15] food that produces this effect upon them, and the reason given by Diogenes is foolish, for he says that in air they take in too much air and hence die, but in the water they take in a moderate amount. But that should be a possible occurrence with land animals also; as facts are, however, no land animal is suffocated by excessive respiration. Again, if all animals breathe, insects must do so also. But [20] many of them seem to live though divided not merely into two, but into several parts, e.g. those called millipedes. But how can they, when thus divided, breathe, and what is the organ they employ? The main reason why these writers have not given a good account of these facts is that they have no acquaintance with the internal parts, and that they did not grasp that nature does everything for the sake [25] of some end. If they had asked for what purpose respiration exists in animals, and had considered this with reference to the parts, e.g. the gills and the lungs, they would have discovered the reason more speedily.

  10(4) · Democritus, however, does teach that in the breathing animals [30] there is a certain result produced by respiration; he asserts that it prevents the soul from being extruded from the body. Nevertheless, he by no means asserts that it is [472a1] for this purpose that nature so contrives it, for he, like the other natural scientists, altogether fails to attain to any such explanation. His statement is that the soul and the hot element are identical, being the primary forms among the spherical particles. Hence, when these are being separated out by the surrounding atmosphere [5] thrusting them out, respiration, according to his account, comes in to succour them. For in the air there are many of those particles which he calls mind and soul. Hence, when we breathe and the air enters, these enter along with it, and by their action cancel the pressure, thus preventing the expulsion of the soul which [10] resides in the animal.

  This explains why life and death are bound up with the taking in and letting out of the breath; for death occurs when the compression by the surrounding air gains the upper hand, and, the animal being unable to respire, the air from outside can no longer enter and counteract the compression. Death is the departure of those forms owing to the expulsive pressure exerted by the surrounding air. As to the [15] reason why all must die at some time—not, however, at any chance time but, when natural, owing to old age, and, when unnatural, to violence.

  But the reason for this and why all must die Democritus has by no means made clear. And yet, since evidently death occurs at one time of life and not at another, he should have said whether the cause is external or internal. Neither does he assign [20] the cause of the beginning of respiration, nor say whether it is internal or external. Indeed, it is not the case that the external mind superintends the reinforcement; rather the origin of breathing and of the respiratory motion must be within: it is not due to pressure from around. It is absurd also that what surrounds should compress and at the same time by entering dilate. This then is practically his theory, and how [25] he puts it.

  But if we must consider that our previous account is true, and that respiration does not occur in every animal, we must deem that this explains death not universally, but only in respiring animals. Yet neither is it a good account of these even, as may clearly be seen from the facts and phenomena of which we all have [30] experience. For in hot weather we grow warmer, and, having more need of respiration, we always breathe faster. But, when the air around is cold and contracts and solidifies the body, retardation of the breathing results. Yet this was just the [472b1] time when the external air should enter and annul the expulsive movement, whereas it is the opposite that occurs. For when the breath is not let out and the heat accumulates too much then we need to respire, and to respire we must draw in the breath. When hot, people breathe rapidly, because they must do so in order to cool [5] themselves, just when the theory of Democritus would make them add fire to fire.

  11(5) · The theory found in the Timaeus, of the passing round of the breath by pushing, by no means determines how, in the case of the animals other than land-animals, their heat is preserved, and whether it is due to the same or a different cause. For if respiration occurs only in land-animals we should be told [10] what is the reason of that. Likewise, if it is found in others also, but in a different form, this form of respiration, if they all can breathe, must also be described.

  Further, the method of explaining involves a fiction. It is said that when the hot air issues from the mouth it pushes the surrounding air, which being carried on enters the very place whence the internal warmth issued, through the interstices of [15] the porous flesh; and this reciprocal replacement is due to the fact that a vacuum cannot exist. But when it has become hot the air passes out again by the same route, and pushes back inwards through the mouth the air that had been discharged in a warm condition. It is said that it is this action which goes on continuously when the breath is taken in and let out.

  [20] But according to this way of thinking it will follow that we breathe out before we breathe in. But the opposite is the case, as evidence shows, for though these two functions go on in alternation, yet the last act when life comes to a close is the letting out of the breath, and hence its admission must have been the beginning of the process.

  Once more, those who give this kind of explanation by no means state
the final [25] cause of the presence in animals of this function (to wit the admission and emission of the breath), but treat it as though it were a contingent accompaniment of life. Yet it evidently has control over life and death, for when respiring animals are unable to breathe they perish. Again, it is absurd that the passage of the hot air out [30] through the mouth and back again should be quite perceptible, while we were not able to detect the passage of the breath into the thorax and its return outwards once more when heated. It is also nonsense that respiration should consist in the entrance of heat, for the evidence is to the contrary effect; what is breathed out is hot, and what is breathed in is cold. When it is hot we pant in breathing, for, because what [473a1] enters does not adequately perform its cooling function, we have as a consequence to draw the breath frequently.

  12(6) · But we must not entertain the notion that it is for purposes of nutrition that respiration is designed, and believe that the internal fire is fed by the [5] breath; respiration, as it were, adding fuel to the fire, while the feeding of the flame results in the outward passage of the breath. To combat this doctrine I shall repeat what I said in opposition to the previous theories. This, or something analogous to it, should occur in the other animals also, for all possess vital heat. Further, how are we to describe this fictitious process of the generation of heat from the breath? [10] Observation shows rather that it is a product of the food. A consequence also of this theory is that the nutriment would enter and the refuse be discharged by the same channel, but this does not appear to occur in the other instances.

  13(7) · Empedocles also gives an account of respiration without, however, [15] making clear what its purpose is, or whether or not it is universal in animals. Also when dealing with respiration by means of the nostrils he imagines he is dealing with what is the primary kind of respiration. Even the breath which passes through the nostrils passes through the windpipe out of the chest as well, and without the latter the nostrils cannot act. Again, when animals are bereft of respiration through [20] the nostrils, no detrimental result ensues, but, when prevented from breathing through the windpipe, they die. Nature employs respiration through the nostrils as a secondary function in certain animals in order to enable them to smell. That is why [25] though almost all animals are endowed with the sense of smell, the sense-organ is not the same in all.

  A more precise account has been given about this elsewhere. Empedocles, however, explains the passage inwards and outwards of the breath, by the theory [473b1] that there are certain blood-vessels, which, while containing blood, are not filled by it, but have passages leading to the outer air, the calibre of which is fine in contrast to the size of the solid particles, but large relatively to those in the air. Hence, since it is the nature of the blood to move upwards and downwards, when it moves down [5] the air rushes in and inspiration occurs; when the blood rises, the air is forced out and the outward motion of the breath results. He compares this process to what occurs in a clepsydra.1

  Thus all things outwards breathe and in;—their flesh has tubes

  Bloodless, that stretch towards the body’s outmost edge, [10]

  Which, at their mouths, full many frequent channels pierce,

  Cleaving the extreme nostrils through; thus, while the gore

  Lies hid, for air is cut a thoroughfare most plain.

  And thence, whenever shrinks away the tender blood,

  Enters the blustering wind with swelling billow wild. [15]

  But when the blood leaps up, backward it breathes. As when

  With clepsydra of polished bronze a maiden sporting,

  Sets on her comely hand the narrow of the tube

  And dips it in the frail-formed water’s silvery sheen;

  Not then the flood the vessel enters, but the air, [20]

  Pressing within on the dense orifices, checks it,

  Until she frees the crowded stream. But then indeed

  Upon the air’s escape runs in the water meet.

  So also when within the vessel’s deeps the water

  [25] Remains, the opening by the hand of flesh being closed,

  The outer air that entrance craves restrains the flood

  At the gates of the sounding, upon the surface pressing,

  [474a1] Until the maid withdraws her hand. But then in contrariwise

  Once more the air comes in and water meet flows out.

  Thus too the subtle blood, surging throughout the limbs,

  Whene’er it shrinks away into the far recesses

  [5] Admits a stream of air rushing with swelling wave,

  But, when it backward leaps, in like bulk air flows out.

  This then is what he says of respiration. But, as we said, all animals that evidently respire do so by means of the windpipe, when they breathe either through the mouth or through the nostrils. Hence, if it is of this kind of respiration that he is [10] talking, we must ask how it tallies with the explanation given. But the facts seem to be quite opposed. The region is raised in the manner of a forge-bellows when the breath is drawn in—it is quite reasonable that it should be heat which raises it up and that the blood should occupy the hot region—but it collapses and sinks down, [15] like the bellows once more, when the breath is let out. The difference is that in a bellows it is not by the same channel that the air is taken in and let out, but in breathing it is.

  But, if Empedocles is accounting only for respiration through the nostrils, he is much in error, for that does not involve the nostrils alone, but passes by the channel [20] beside the uvula where the extremity of the roof of the mouth is, some of the air going this way through the apertures of the nostrils and some through the mouth, both when it enters and when it passes out. Such then is the nature and magnitude of the difficulties besetting the theories of other writers concerning respiration.

  [25] 14(8) · We have already stated that life and the presence of soul involve a certain heat. Not even the digesting process to which is due the nutrition of animals occurs apart from soul and warmth, for it is fire that in all cases does the work. It is for this reason, precisely, that the primary nutritive soul also must be located in that part of the body and in that division of this region which is the immediate vehicle of [474b1] this principle. The region in question is intermediate between that where food enters and that where excrement is discharged. In bloodless animals it has no name, but in the sanguineous class this part is called the heart. The blood constitutes the nutriment from which the parts of the animal are directly formed. Likewise the [5] blood-vessels must have the same originating source, as the blood, since the one exists for the sake of the other—as a vessel or receptacle for it. In sanguineous animals the heart is the starting-point of the veins; they do not traverse it, but are found to stretch out from it, as dissections enable us to see.

  [10] Now the other faculties of the soul cannot exist apart from the power of nutrition (the reason has already been stated in the treatise on the soul), and this depends on the natural fire, by the union with which Nature has set it aglow. But fire, as we have already stated, is destroyed in two ways, either by extinction or by exhaustion. It suffers extinction from its opposites. Hence it can be extinguished by [15] the surrounding cold both when in mass and (though more speedily) when scattered. Now this way of perishing is due to violence equally in living and in lifeless objects, for the division of an animal by instruments and consequent congelation by excess of cold cause death. But exhaustion is due to excess of heat; [20] for, if there is too much heat close at hand and the thing burning does not have a fresh supply of fuel added to it, it goes out by exhaustion, not by the action of cold. Hence, if it is going to continue it must be cooled, for cold is a preventive against this form of extinction.

  15(9) · Some animals occupy the water, others live on land, and, that being [25] so, in the case of those which are very small and bloodless the refrigeration due to the surrounding water or air is sufficient to prevent destruction from this cause. Having little heat, they require little
cold to combat it. Hence too such animals are almost all short-lived, for, being small, they have less scope for deflection towards either extreme. But some insects are longer-lived (though bloodless, like all the [475a1] others), and these have a deep indentation beneath the waist, in order to secure cooling through the membrane, which there is thinner. They are warmer animals and hence require more refrigeration, and such are bees (some of which live as long as seven years) and all that make a humming noise, like wasps, cockchafers, and [5] crickets. They make a sound as if of panting by means of air; for, in the middle section itself which rises and falls with the intake breath, friction is produced against the membrane. The way in which they move this region is like the motion due to the lungs in animals that breathe the outer air, or to the gills in fishes. What [10] occurs is comparable to the suffocation of a respiring animal by holding its mouth, for then the lung causes a heaving motion of this kind. In the case of these animals this motion is not sufficient for refrigeration, but in insects it is. It is by friction [15] against the membrane that they produce the humming sound, as we say, in the way that children do by blowing through the holes of a reed covered by a fine membrane. It is thus that the singing crickets too produce their song; they possess greater warmth and are indented at the waist, but the songless variety have no fissure [20] there.

  Animals also which are sanguineous and possess a lung, though that contains little blood and is spongy, can in some cases, owing to the latter fact, live a long time without breathing; for the lung, containing little blood or fluid, can rise a long way: its own motion can for a long time produce sufficient refrigeration. But at last it ceases to suffice, and the animal dies of suffocation if it does not respire—as we [25] have already said. For of exhaustion that kind which is destruction due to lack of refrigeration is called suffocation, and whatsoever is thus destroyed is said to be suffocated.