The Politics of Aristotle

by Aristotle

  [1074b1] Our forefathers in the most remote ages have handed down to us their posterity a tradition, in the form of a myth, that these substances are gods and that the divine encloses the whole of nature. The rest of the tradition has been added later in [5] mythical form with a view to the persuasion of the multitude and to its legal and utilitarian expediency; they say these gods are in the form of men or like some of the other animals, and they say other things consequent on and similar to these which we have mentioned. But if we were to separate the first point from these additions and take it alone—that they thought the first substances to be gods—we must [10] regard this as an inspired utterance, and reflect that, while probably each art and science has often been developed as far as possible and has again perished, these opinions have been preserved like relics until the present. Only thus far, then, is the opinion of our ancestors and our earliest predecessors clear to us.

  [15] 9 · The nature of the divine thought involves certain problems; for while thought is held to be the most divine of phenomena, the question what it must be in order to have that character involves difficulties. For if it thinks nothing, what is there here of dignity? It is just like one who sleeps. And if it thinks, but this depends on something else, then (as that which is its substance is not the act of thinking, but [20] a capacity) it cannot be the best substance; for it is through thinking that its value belongs to it. Further, whether its substance is the faculty of thought or the act of thinking, what does it think? Either itself or something else; and if something else, either the same always or something different. Does it matter, then, or not, whether it thinks the good or any chance thing? Are there not some things about which it is [25] incredible that it should think? Evidently, then, it thinks that which is most divine and precious, and it does not change; for change would be change for the worse, and this would be already a movement. First, then, if it is not the act of thinking but a capacity, it would be reasonable to suppose that the continuity of its thinking is [30] wearisome to it. Secondly, there would evidently be something else more precious than thought, viz. that which is thought. For both thinking and the act of thought will belong even to one who has the worst of thoughts. Therefore if this ought to be avoided (and it ought, for there are even some things which it is better not to see than to see), the act of thinking cannot be the best of things. Therefore it must be itself that thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.

  [35] But evidently knowledge and perception and opinion and understanding have always something else as their object, and themselves only by the way. Further, if thinking and being thought are different, in respect of which does goodness belong to thought? For being an act of thinking and being an object of thought are not the [1075a1] same. We answer that in some cases the knowledge is the object. In the productive sciences (if we abstract from the matter) the substance in the sense of essence, and in the theoretical sciences the formula or the act of thinking, is the object. As, then, thought and the object of thought are not different in the case of things that have not matter, they will be the same, i.e. the thinking will be one with the object of its thought.

  A further question is left—whether the object of the thought is composite; for [5] if it were, thought would change in passing from part to part of the whole. We answer that everything which has not matter is indivisible. As human thought, or rather the thought of composite objects, is in a certain period of time (for it does not possess the good at this moment or at that, but its best, being something different from it, is attained only in a whole period of time), so throughout eternity is the thought which has itself for its object. [10]

  10 · We must consider also in which of two ways the nature of the universe contains the good or the highest good, whether as something separate and by itself, or as the order of the parts. Probably in both ways, as an army does. For the good is found both in the order and in the leader, and more in the latter; for he does not depend on the order but it depends on him. And all things are ordered together [15] somehow, but not all alike,—both fishes and fowls and plants; and the world is not such that one thing has nothing to do with another, but they are connected. For all are ordered together to one end. (But it is as in a house, where the freemen are least at liberty to act as they will, but all things or most things are already ordained for [20] them, while the slaves and the beasts do little for the common good, and for the most part live at random; for this is the sort of principle that constitutes the nature of each.) I mean, for instance, that all must at least come to be dissolved into their elements, and there are other functions similarly in which all share for the good of the whole.

  We must not fail to observe how many impossible or paradoxical results [25] confront those who hold different views from our own, and what are the views of the subtler thinkers, and which views are attended by fewest difficulties. All make all things out of contraries. But neither ‘all things’ nor ‘out of contraries’ is right; nor do they tell us how the things in which the contraries are present can be made out of the [30] contraries; for contraries are not affected by one another. Now for us this difficulty is solved naturally by the fact that there is a third factor. These thinkers however make one of the two contraries matter; this is done for instance by those who make the unequal matter for the equal, or the many matter for the one. But this also is refuted in the same way; for the matter which is one is contrary to nothing. Further, all things, except the one, will, on the view we are criticizing, partake of evil; for the [35] bad is itself one of the two elements. But the other school does not treat the good and the bad even as principles; yet in all things the good is in the highest degree a principle. The school we first mentioned is right in saying that it is a principle, but how the good is a principle they do not say—whether as end or as mover or as [1075b1] form.

  Empedocles also has a paradoxical view; for he identifies the good with love. But this is a principle both as mover (for it brings things together) and as matter (for it is part of the mixture). Now even if it happens that the same thing is a [5] principle both as matter and as mover, still being them is not the same. In which respect then is love a principle? It is paradoxical also that strife should be imperishable; strife is for him the nature of the bad.

  Anaxagoras makes the good a motive principle; for thought moves things, but moves them for the sake of something, which must be something other than it, [10] except according to our way of stating the case; for the medical art is in a sense health. It is paradoxical also not to suppose a contrary to the good, i.e. to thought. But all who speak of the contraries make no use of the contraries, unless we bring their views into shape. And why some things are perishable and others imperishable, no one tells us; for they make all existing things out of the same principles. [15] Further, some make existing things out of the non-existent; and others to avoid the necessity of this make all things one.

  Further, why should there always be becoming, and what is the cause of becoming?—this no one tells us. And those who suppose two principles must suppose another, a superior principle, and so must those who believe in the Forms; for why did things come to participate, or why do they participate, in the Forms? And all other thinkers are confronted by the necessary consequence that there is [20] something contrary to Wisdom, i.e. to the highest knowledge; but we are not. For there is nothing contrary to that which is primary (for all contraries have matter and are potentially); and the ignorance which is contrary would lead us to a contrary object; but what is primary has no contrary.

  Again, if besides sensible things no others exist, there will be no first principle, [25] no order, no becoming, no heavenly bodies, but each principle will have a principle before it, as in the accounts of the mythologists and all the natural philosophers. But if the Forms or the numbers are to exist, they will be causes of nothing; or if not that, at least not of movement.

  Further, how is extension, i.e. a continuum, to be produced out of
unextended [30] parts? For number will not, either as mover or as form, produce a continuum. But again there cannot be any contrary that is also a productive or moving principle; for it would be possible for it not to be. Or at least its action would be posterior to its capacity. The world then would not be eternal. But it is; one of these premises, then, must be denied. And we have said how this must be done. Further, in virtue of what [35] the numbers, or the soul and the body, or in general the form and the thing, are one—of this no one tells us anything; nor can any one tell, unless he says, as we do, that the mover makes them one. And those who say mathematical number is first and go on to generate one kind of substance after another and give different [1076a1] principles for each, make the substance of the universe a series of episodes (for one substance has no influence on another by its existence or non-existence), and they give us many principles; but the world must not be governed badly.

  ‘The rule of many is not good; let there be one ruler.’5

  BOOK XIII (M)

  1 · We have stated what is the substance of sensible things, dealing in the treatise on physics with matter, and later with the substance which has actual existence. Now since our inquiry is whether there is or is not besides the sensible [10] substances any which is immovable and eternal, and, if there is, what it is, we must first consider what is said by others, so that, if there is anything which they say wrongly, we may not be liable to the same objections, while, if there is any opinion common to them and us, we shall not quarrel with ourselves on that account; for one [15] must be content to state some points better than one’s predecessors, and others no worse.

  Two opinions are held on this subject; it is said that the objects of mathematics—i.e. numbers and lines and the like—are substances, and again that the Ideas are substances. And since some recognize these as two different classes—the Ideas and the mathematical numbers—and some recognize both as having one nature, [20] while some others say that the mathematical substances are the only substances, we must consider first the objects of mathematics, not qualifying them by any other characteristic—not asking, for instance, whether they are Ideas or not, or whether they are the principles and substances of existing things or not, but only whether as [25] the objects of mathematics they exist or not, and if they do, how they exist; then after this we must separately consider the Ideas themselves in a general way, and only as far as systematic treatment demands; for most of what we have to say has been repeatedly stated in popular works. And the greater part of our account must attack the inquiry already mentioned, viz. whether the substances and the principles [30] of existing things are numbers and Ideas; for after the discussion of the Ideas this remains as a third inquiry.

  If the objects of mathematics exist, then they must exist either in sensible objects, as some say, or separate from sensible objects (and this also is said by some), or if they exist in neither of these ways, either they do not exist, or they exist [35] in some other way. So that the subject of our discussion will be not whether they exist but how they exist.

  2 · That it is impossible for mathematical objects to exist in sensible things and at the same time that the doctrine in question is a fanciful one, has been said already in our discussion of difficulties,—the reasons being that it is impossible for [1076b1] two solids to be in the same place, and that according to the same argument all the other powers and characteristics also should exist in sensible things—none of them existing separately. This we have said already. But, further, it is obvious that on this theory it is impossible for any body whatever to be divided; for it would have to be [5] divided at a plane, and the plane at a line, and the line at a point, so that if the point cannot be divided, neither can the line, and if the line cannot, neither can the plane nor the solid. What difference then does it make whether sensible things are of this kind, or, without being so themselves, have such things in them? The result will be [10] the same; if the sensible things are divided the others will be divided too, or else not even the sensible things can be divided.

  But, again, it is not possible that such entities should exist separately. For if besides the sensible solids there are to be other solids which are separate from them and prior to the sensible solids, it is plain that besides the planes also there must be [15] other and separate planes and points and lines; for consistency requires this. But if these exist, again besides the planes and lines and points of the mathematical solid there must be others which are separate. For the incomposite is prior to the compound; and if there are, prior to the sensible bodies, bodies which are not [20] sensible, by the same argument the planes which exist by themselves must be prior to those which are in the motionless solids. Therefore these will be planes and lines other than those that exist along with the separate mathematical solids; for the latter exist along with the mathematical solids, while the others are prior to the [25] mathematical solids. Again, there will be, belonging to these planes, lines, and prior to them there will have to be, by the same argument, other lines and points; and prior to these points in the prior lines there will have to be other points, though there will be no others prior to these. Now the accumulation becomes absurd; for we find [30] ourselves with one set of solids apart from the sensible solids; three sets of planes apart from the sensible planes—those which exist apart from the sensible planes, and those in the mathematical solids, and those which exist apart from those in the mathematical solids; four sets of lines, and five sets of points. With which of these, then, will the mathematical sciences deal? Certainly not with the planes and lines [35] and points in the motionless solid; for science always deals with what is prior. And the same account will apply also to numbers; for there will be another set of units apart from each set of points, and also apart from each set of realities, from the objects of sense and again from those of thought; so that there will be various classes of mathematical numbers.

  [1077a1] Again, how is it possible to solve the questions which we enumerated in our discussion of difficulties? For besides the sensible things there will be, on similar principles, the things with which astronomy and those with which geometry deals; but how is it possible that a heaven and its parts—or indeed anything which has movement—should exist apart from the sensible heaven? Similarly also the objects [5] of optics and harmonics will exist apart; for there will be voice and sight besides the sensible or individual voices and sights. Therefore it is plain that the other senses as well, and the other objects of sense, will exist apart; for why should one set of them do so and another not? And if this is so, animals also will exist apart, since the senses will.

  Again, there are certain mathematical theorems of a universal character, [10] extending beyond these substances. Here then we shall have another substance intermediate between, and separate from, the Ideas and the intermediates,—a substance which is neither number nor points nor spatial magnitude nor time. And if this is impossible, plainly it is also impossible that the former substances should exist separate from sensible things.

  [15] And, in general, conclusions contrary alike to the truth and to the usual views follow, if one supposes the objects of mathematics to exist thus as separate entities. For if they exist thus they must be prior to sensible spatial magnitudes, but in truth they must be posterior; for the incomplete spatial magnitude is in the order of generation prior, but in the order of substance posterior, as the lifeless is to the living.

  Again, what in the world1 will make mathematical magnitudes one? For things [20] in our perceptible world are one in virtue of soul, or of a part of soul, or of something else, reasonably enough; when these are not present, the thing is a plurality, and splits up into parts. But in the case of the objects of mathematics, which are divisible and are quantities, what is the cause of their being one and holding together?

  Again, the modes of generation of the objects of mathematics show that we are right. For the dimension first generated is length, then comes breadth, lastly depth, [25] and the process is complete. If, then
, that which is posterior in the order of generation is prior in the order of substance, body will be prior to the plane and the line. And in this way also it is more complete and more whole, because it can become animate. How, on the other hand, could a line or a plane be animate? The supposition passes the power of our senses. [30]

  Again, body is a sort of substance; for it already has in a sense completeness. But how can lines be substances? Neither as a form or shape, as the soul perhaps is, nor as matter, like body; for we have no experience of anything that can be put together out of lines or planes or points, while if these had been a sort of material [35] substance, we should have observed things which could be put together out of them.

  Grant that they are prior in formula. Still not all things which are prior in [1077b1] formula are prior in substance. For those things are prior in substance which when separated from other things continue to exist, but those are prior in formula out of whose formulae the formulae of other things are compounded; and these two properties are not co-extensive. For if attributes, such as moving or white, do not exist apart from their substances, the white is prior to the white man in formula, but [5] not in substance. For it cannot exist separately, but is always along with the compound thing; and by the compound thing I mean the white man. Therefore it is plain that neither is the result of abstraction prior nor that which is produced by [10] adding posterior; for it is by adding to the white that we speak of the white man.