The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

  It is the fulfilment of what is potential when it is already fully real and operates not as itself but as movable, that is motion. (30) What I mean by ‘as’ is this: Bronze is potentially a statue. But it is not the fulfilment of bronze as bronze which is motion. For ‘to be bronze’ and ‘to be a certain potentiality’ are not the same. If they were identical without qualification, i. e. in definition, the fulfilment of bronze as bronze would have been motion. But they are not the same, as has been said. (This is obvious in contraries. To be capable of health’ and ‘to be capable of illness’ are not the same, (35) for if they were there would be no difference between being ill and being well. [201b] Yet the subject both of health and of sickness—whether it is humour or blood—is one and the same.)

  We can distinguish, then, between the two—just as, to give another example, ‘colour’ and ‘visible’ are different—and clearly it is the fulfilment of what is potential as potential that is motion. (5) So this, precisely, is motion.

  Further it is evident that motion is an attribute of a thing just when it is fully real in this way, and neither before nor after. For each thing of this kind is capable of being at one time actual, at another not. Take for instance the buildable as buildable. The actuality of the buildable as buildable is the process of building. (10) For the actuality of the buildable must be either this or the house. But when there is a house, the buildable is no longer buildable. On the other hand, it is the buildable which is being built. The process then of being built must be the kind of actuality required. But building is a kind of motion, and the same account will apply to the other kinds also. (15)

  2 The soundness of this definition is evident both when we consider the accounts of motion that the others have given, and also from the difficulty of defining it otherwise.

  One could not easily put motion and change in another genus—this is plain if we consider where some people put it; they identify motion with ‘difference’ or ‘inequality’2 or ‘not being’; but such things are not necessarily moved, (20) whether they are ‘different’ or ‘unequal’ or ‘non-existent’: Nor is change either to or from these rather than to or from their opposites.

  The reason why they put motion into these genera is that it is thought to be something indefinite, and the principles in the second column are indefinite because they are privative: none of them is either ‘this’ or ‘such’ or comes under any of the other modes of predication. (25) The reason in turn why motion is thought to be indefinite is that it cannot be classed simply as a potentiality or as an actuality—a thing that is merely capable of having a certain size is not undergoing change, nor yet a thing that is actually of a certain size, (30) and motion is thought to be a sort of actuality, but incomplete, the reason for this view being that the potential whose actuality it is is incomplete. This is why it is hard to grasp what motion is. It is necessary to class it with privation or with potentiality or with sheer actuality, yet none of these seems possible. (35) There remains then the suggested mode of definition, namely that it is a sort of actuality, or actuality of the kind described, hard to grasp, but not incapable of existing. [202a]

  The mover too is moved, as has been said—every mover, that is, which is capable of motion, and whose immobility is rest—when a thing is subject to motion its immobility is rest. For to act on the movable as such is just to move it. But this it does by contact, (5) so that at the same time it is also acted on. Hence we can define motion as the fulfilment of the movable qua movable, the cause of the attribute being contact with what can move, so that the mover is also acted on. The mover or agent will always be the vehicle of a form, either a ‘this’ or a ‘such,’ (10) which, when it acts, will be the source and cause of the change, e. g. the full-formed man begets man from what is potentially man.

  3 The solution of the difficulty that is raised about the motion—whether it is in the movable—is plain. It is the fulfilment of this potentiality, and by the action of that which has the power of causing motion; and the actuality of that which has the power of causing motion is not other than the actuality of the movable, (15) for it must be the fulfilment of both. A thing is capable of causing motion because it can do this, it is a mover because it actually does it. But it is on the movable that it is capable of acting. Hence there is a single actuality of both alike, just as one to two and two to one are the same interval, (20) and the steep ascent and the steep descent are one—for these are one and the same, although they can be described in different ways. So it is with the mover and the moved.

  This view has a dialectical difficulty. Perhaps it is necessary that the actuality of the agent and that of the patient should not be the same. The one is ‘agency’ and the other ‘patiency’; and the outcome and completion of the one is an ‘action’, that of the other a ‘passion’. (25) Since then they are both motions, we may ask: in what are they, if they are different? Either (a) both are in what is acted on and moved, or (b) the agency is in the agent and the patiency in the patient. (If we ought to call the latter also ‘agency’, the word would be used in two senses.)

  Now, in alternative (b) the motion will be in the mover, for the same statement will hold of ‘mover’ and ‘moved’.3 Hence either every mover will be moved, (30) or, though having motion, it will not be moved.

  If on the other hand (a) both are in what is moved and acted on—both the agency and the patiency (e. g. both teaching and learning, though they are two, in the learner), then, first, the actuality of each will not be present in each, and, a second absurdity, (35) a thing will have two motions at the same time. How will there be two alterations of quality in one subject towards one definite quality? The thing is impossible: the actualization will be one. [202b]

  But (some one will say) it is contrary to reason to suppose that there should be one identical actualization of two things which are different in kind. Yet there will be, if teaching and learning are the same, and agency and patiency. To teach will be the same as to learn, and to act the same as to be acted on—the teacher will necessarily be learning everything that he teaches, and the agent will be acted on.

  One may reply:

  (1) It is not absurd that the actualization of one thing should be in another. (5) Teaching is the activity of a person who can teach, yet the operation is performed on some patient—it is not cut adrift from a subject, but is of A on B.

  (2) There is nothing to prevent two things having one and the same actualization, provided the actualizations are not described in the same way, but are related as what can act to what is acting.

  (3) Nor is it necessary that the teacher should learn, (10) even if to act and to be acted on are one and the same, provided they are not the same in definition (as ‘raiment’ and ‘dress’), but are the same merely in the sense in which the road from Thebes to Athens and the road from Athens to Thebes are the same, as has been explained above.4 For it is not things which are in a way the same that have all their attributes the same, but only such as have the same definition. (15) But indeed it by no means follows from the fact that teaching is the same as learning, that to learn is the same as to teach, any more than it follows from the fact that there is one distance between two things which are at a distance from each other, that the two vectors AB and BA are one and the same. To generalize, teaching is not the same as learning, or agency as patiency, in the full sense, (20) though they belong to the same subject, the motion; for the ‘actualization of X in Y’ and the ‘actualization of Y through the action of X’ differ in definition.

  What then Motion is, has been stated both generally and particularly. It is not difficult to see how each of its types will be defined—alteration is the fulfilment of the alterable qua alterable (or, (25) more scientifically, the fulfilment of what can act and what can be acted on, as such)—generally and again in each particular case, building, healing, &c. A similar definition will apply to each of the other kinds of motion.

  4 The science of nature is concerned with spatial magnitudes and motio
n and time, (30) and each of these at least is necessarily infinite or finite, even if some things dealt with by the science are not, e. g. a quality or a point—it is not necessary perhaps that such things should be put under either head. Hence it is incumbent on the person who specializes in physics to discuss the infinite and to inquire whether there is such a thing or not, (35) and, if there is, what it is.

  The appropriateness to the science of this problem is clearly indicated. [203a] All who have touched on this kind of science in a way worth considering have formulated views about the infinite, and indeed, to a man, make it a principle of things.

  (1) Some, as the Pythagoreans and Plato, (5) make the infinite a principle in the sense of a self-subsistent substance, and not as a mere attribute of some other thing. Only the Pythagoreans place the infinite among the objects of sense (they do not regard number as separable from these), and assert that what is outside the heaven is infinite. Plato, on the other hand, holds that there is no body outside (the Forms are not outside, because they are nowhere), yet that the infinite is present not only in the objects of sense but in the Forms also.

  Further, (10) the Pythagoreans identify the infinite with the even. For this, they say, when it is cut off and shut in by the odd, provides things with the element of infinity. An indication of this is what happens with numbers. If the gnomons are placed round the one, and without the one,5 in the one construction the figure that results is always different, (15) in the other it is always the same. But Plato has two infinites, the Great and the Small.

  The physicists, on the other hand, all of them, always regard the infinite as an attribute of a substance which is different from it and belongs to the class of the so-called elements6—water or air or what is intermediate between them. Those who make them limited in number never make them infinite in amount. But those who make the elements infinite in number, (20) as Anaxagoras and Democritus do, say that the infinite is continuous by contact—compounded of the homogeneous parts according to the one, of the seed-mass of the atomic shapes according to the other.

  Further, Anaxagoras held that any part is a mixture in the same way as the All, on the ground of the observed fact that anything comes out of anything. For it is probably for this reason that he maintains that once upon a time all things were together. (25) (This flesh and this bone were together, and so of any thing: therefore all things: and at the same time too.) For there is a beginning of separation, not only for each thing, but for all. Each thing that comes to be comes to be from a similar body, and there is a coming to be of all things, (30) though not, it is true, at the same time. Hence there must also be an origin of coming to be. One such source there is which he calls Mind, and Mind begins its work of thinking from some starting-point. So necessarily all things must have been together at a certain time, and must have begun to be moved at a certain time.

  Democritus, for his part, asserts the contrary, namely that no element arises from another element. Nevertheless for him the common body is a source of all things, differing from part to part in size and in shape. [203b]

  It is clear then from these considerations that the inquiry concerns the physicist. Nor is it without reason that they all make it a principle or source. We cannot say that the infinite has no effect, (5) and the only effectiveness which we can ascribe to it is that of a principle. Everything is either a source or derived from a source. But there cannot be a source of the infinite or limitless, for that would be a limit of it. Further, as it is a beginning, it is both uncreatable and indestructible. For there must be a point at which what has come to be reaches completion, and also a termination of all passing away. That is why, (10) as we say, there is no principle of this, but it is this which is held to be the principle of other things, and to encompass all and to steer all, as those assert who do not recognize, alongside the infinite, other causes, such as Mind or Friendship. Further they identify it with the Divine, for it is ‘deathless and imperishable’ as Anaximander says, with the majority of the physicists.

  Belief in the existence of the infinite comes mainly from five considerations:

  (1) From the nature of time—for it is infinite. (15)

  (2) From the division of magnitudes—for the mathematicians also use the notion of the infinite.

  (3) If coming to be and passing away do not give out, it is only because that from which things come to be is infinite.

  (4) Because the limited always finds its limit in something, (20) so that there must be no limit, if everything is always limited by something different from itself.

  (5) Most of all, a reason which is peculiarly appropriate and presents the difficulty that is felt by everybody—not only number but also mathematical magnitudes and what is outside the heaven are supposed to be infinite because they never give out in our thought.

  The last fact (that what is outside is infinite) leads people to suppose that body also is infinite, (25) and that there is an infinite number of worlds. Why should there be body in one part of the void rather than in another? Grant only that mass is anywhere and it follows that it must be everywhere. Also, if void and place are infinite, there must be infinite body too, for in the case of eternal things what may be must be.

  But the problem of the infinite is difficult: many contradictions result whether we suppose it to exist or not to exist. (30) If it exists, we have still to ask how it exists; as a substance or as the essential attribute of some entity? Or in neither way, yet none the less is there something which is infinite or some things which are infinitely many?

  The problem, however, which specially belongs to the physicist is to investigate whether there is a sensible magnitude which is infinite. [204a]

  We must begin by distinguishing the various senses in which the term ‘infinite’ is used.

  (1) What is incapable of being gone through, because it is not its nature to be gone through (the sense in which the voice is ‘invisible’).

  (2) What admits of being gone through, the process however having no termination, (5) or (3) what scarcely admits of being gone through.

  (4) What naturally admits of being gone through, but is not actually gone through or does not actually reach an end.

  Further, everything that is infinite may be so in respect of addition or division or both.

  5 Now it is impossible that the infinite should be a thing which is itself infinite, separable from sensible objects. (10) If the infinite is neither a magnitude nor an aggregate, but is itself a substance and not an attribute, it will be indivisible; for the divisible must be either a magnitude or an aggregate. But if indivisible, then not infinite, except in the sense (1) in which the voice is ‘invisible’. But this is not the sense in which it is used by those who say that the infinite exists, nor that in which we are investigating it, namely as (2), ‘that which cannot be gone through’. But if the infinite exists as an attribute, (15) it would not be, qua infinite, an element in substances, any more than the invisible would be an element of speech, though the voice is invisible.

  Further, how can the infinite be itself any thing, unless both number and magnitude, of which it is an essential attribute, exist in that way? If they are not substances, a fortiori the infinite is not.

  It is plain, (20) too, that the infinite cannot be an actual thing and a substance and principle. For any part of it that is taken will be infinite, if it has parts: for ‘to be infinite’ and ‘the infinite’ are the same, if it is a substance and not predicated of a subject. Hence it will be either indivisible or divisible into infinites. (25) But the same thing cannot be many infinites. (Yet just as part of air is air, so a part of the infinite would be infinite, if it is supposed to be a substance and principle.) Therefore the infinite must be without parts and indivisible. But this cannot be true of what is infinite in full completion: for it must be a definite quantity.

  Suppose then that infinity belongs to substance as an attribute. But, if so, it cannot, as we have said, be described as a principle, (30) but rather that of whic
h it is an attribute—the air or the even number.

  Thus the view of those who speak after the manner of the Pythagoreans is absurd. With the same breath they treat the infinite as substance, and divide it into parts.

  This discussion, however, involves the more general question whether the infinite can be present in mathematical objects and things which are intelligible and do not have extension, (35) as well as among sensible objects. [204b] Our inquiry (as physicists) is limited to its special subject-matter, the objects of sense, and we have to ask whether there is or is not among them a body which is infinite in the direction of increase.

  We may begin with a dialectical argument and show as follows that there is no such thing.

  If ‘bounded by a surface’ is the definition of body there cannot be an infinite body either intelligible or sensible. (5) Nor can number taken in abstraction be infinite, for number or that which has number is numerable. If then the numerable can be numbered, it would also be possible to go through the infinite.

  If, on the other hand, we investigate the question more in accordance with principles appropriate to physics, (10) we are led as follows to the same result.

  The infinite body must be either (1) compound, or (2) simple; yet neither alternative is possible.

  (1) Compound the infinite body will not be, if the elements are finite in number. For they must be more than one, and the contraries must always balance, and no one of them can be infinite. If one of the bodies falls in any degree short of the other in potency—suppose fire is finite in amount while air is infinite and a given quantity of fire exceeds in power the same amount of air in any ratio provided it is numerically definite—the infinite body will obviously prevail over and annihilate the finite body. (15) On the other hand, it is impossible that each should be infinite. ‘Body’ is what has extension in all directions and the infinite is what is boundlessly extended, (20) so that the infinite body would be extended in all directions ad infinitum.