The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

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  1 i. e. as well as Anaxagoras: Cf. above, 314a 13–15.

  2 i. e. as well as ordinary people: Cf. b 13 ff.

  3 i. e. according to Empedocles.

  4 i. e. at the period when Empedocles himself appears to recognize that his ‘elements’ come-to-be.

  5 i. e. the motion of dissociation initiated by Strife.

  6 i. e. if we still wish to maintain that coming-to-be (though it actually occurs and is distinct from ‘alteration’) is not ‘association’.

  7 Cf. e. g. de Caelo 299 a 6–11.

  8 i. e. by progressive bisection ad infinitum.

  9 i. e. ‘through and through’ division.

  10 i. e. the sum of the now separated parts.

  11 i. e. all the points into which the body has been dissolved by the ‘through and through’ division.

  12 Cf. above, 316a 24–5.

  13 i. e. points-of-division and quality.

  14 Cf. Physics 231a 21 ff.; de Caelo 303a 3 ff.

  15 i. e. every perceptible body: Cf. above, 316b 21.

  16 i. e. all change ‘in what is continuous’.

  17 i. e. a ‘formal’ factor.

  18 Cf. 328a 23 ff.

  19 The second main topic of investigation is formulated below, 317b 34–5.

  20 Physics i. 6–9.

  21 Cf. above, 317b 10–11.

  22 ‘Unqualified coming-to-be’ = substantial change.

  23 ‘Partial’ = ‘qualified’ coming-to-be, i. e. change of quality, quantity, or place.

  24 Physics viii. 3 ff., especially 258b 10 ff.

  25 Cf. below, II. 10.

  26 i. e. the material cause.

  27 i. e. not merely ‘this is passing-away and that is coming-to-be.’

  28 The theory is put forward by Parmenides as the prevalent, but erroneous, view.

  29 sc. as the things into which the unqualified changes take place.

  30 i. e. one will be ‘a positive real’ and the other ‘a negative something’.

  31 sc. between the unqualified and the qualified changes.

  32 ‘In truth’, i. e. according to Aristotle’s own view which he has just stated (above, 318b 14–18).

  33 sc. without qualification.

  34 i. e. without qualification.

  35 i. e. in the Column containing the positive terms: Cf. above, 318b 14–18.

  36 Cf. above, 318a 13–23.

  37 A ‘not-being’ in the popular sense of the term, i. e. an ‘imperceptible’. The imperceptibility of the material is irrelevant to the question of its reality.

  38 ‘what is not’ = what is imperceptible.

  39 Cf. below, II. 1–3.

  40 Aristotle is not saying that water and air are in fact ‘cold’, but is only quoting a common view in illustration.

  41 Cf. above, 315a 26–28.

  42 i. e. the supposed incorporeal and sizeless matter.

  43 It is clear from what follows that the incorporeal and sizeless matter is assumed to be ‘separate’—to be real independently of body—under both alternatives.

  44 i. e. the supposed incorporeal and sizeless matter.

  45 i. e. either as itself occupying a place, or as contained within a body which itself occupies a place.

  46 ‘inseparable’ from the actual body in which it is contained.

  47 Cf. Physics i. 7; Metaph. 1032a 12 ff.

  48 The efficient cause of the coming-to-be of a hard thing (e. g. of ice or terracotta) is something cold or hot (a freezing wind or a baking fire). Such efficient causes are only generically, not specifically, identical with their effects.

  49 An ‘actuality’ or ‘form’: Cf. Metaph. 1032a 25 ff.

  50 i. e. unless Qualities or Adjectivals are separable from Substances.

  51 Cf. above, 320a 27–b 12.

  52 Cf. Physics iv. 6–9.

  53 Cf. above, 320a 27–b 25.

  54 viz. the third characteristic—that the growing thing ‘persists’.

  55 i. e. has ‘grown’.

  56 i. e. the substance of the shin.

  57 And therefore it is these which are said to grow or to be ‘altered’.

  58 i. e. by an expansion of all parts of the ‘form’.

  59 i. e. ‘been modified’ so as to be transformed into flesh.

  60 i. e. ‘lays hold’ of it and converts it into fire.

  61 i. e. ‘must be together with’ it when this conversion takes place.

  62 i. e. an independent coming-to-be of flesh, not a growth of the already existing tissue.

  63 i. e. what comes-to-be in growth is so-much flesh or bone, or a hand or arm of such and such a size: not ‘quantum-in-general’, but a ‘quantified-something’.

  64 i. e. the form which grows in every part of itself: Cf. above, 321b 22–34.

  65 i. e. this form or power immersed in matter.

  66 i. e. a diminution of the size of the tissue whose form it is.

  67 i. e. are transformations of a single substratum, or ‘derived from one thing’ as Diogenes maintained.

  68 Cf. Physics 226b 21–23.

  69 i. e. if A and B are in reciprocal contact, either A must be heavy and B light, or A light and B heavy: or A and B must both be heavy, or both be light.

  70 i. e. a kind, of which the two opposed things are contrasted species.

  71 i. e. like ‘health’.

  72 The reference is to Parmenides, Melissus, and (probably) Zeno.

  73 i. e. for rendering intelligible the being of a ‘many’.

  74 This appears to be the view of Empedocles, as Aristotle here expresses it: Cf. below, 325b 5–10.

  75 This appears to be the view of the Pythagoreans: Cf. Physics 213b 22–7.

  76 i. e. the existence of motion is just as impossible on the hypothesis of Empedocles as on that of the Pythagoreans.

  77 These words seem to be intended to suggest ‘The Way of Truth’ in the poem of Parmenides.

  78 i. e. as well as the composite bodies.

  79 Cf. Timaeus 53 C ff.

  80 Cf. de Caelo iii, 1, especially 298b 33 ff., iii. 7 and iv. 2.

  81 The uniformity of the substance or ‘stuff’ of the atoms was a fundamental doctrine in the theory.

  82 i. e. in its single, indivisible, undifferentiated identity.

  83 i. e. these qualitatively-distinct sets of atoms.

  84 For the doctrine implied in this argument, Cf. Physics 190b 24, 192a 1 ff.

  85 sc. having pores, all of which are ‘full’.

  86 i. e. the body will still be impenetrable, even if the pores as such (as channels) are distinguished in thought from what fills them. For in fact the pores are always ‘full’ and the body is a plenum throughout—though perhaps not a ‘uniform’ plenum.

  87 ‘Big’ is a relative term and may include a void in any degree bigger than the infinitesimal.

  88 viz. to express such lines of greater susceptibility.

  89 Cf. above, 316a 14–317a 17.

  90 i. e. if this potentiality be realized: Cf. 316a 19.

  91 Cf. above, 322b 5 ff.

  92 sc. in the resulting complex (e. g. ‘white-body’ or ‘learned-man’).

  93 Cf. above, I. 7.

  94 sc. the drop of wine.

  95 Each of the constituents, qua acting on the other, is relatively ‘dominant’. Neither of them is absolutely ‘dominant’, for each ‘suffers action’ from the other. Hence each meets the other half-way, and the resultant is a compromise between them.

  BOOK II

  1 We have explained under what conditions ‘combination’, ‘contact’, and ‘action-passion’ are attributable to the things which undergo natural change. Further, we have discussed ‘unqualified’ coming-to-be and passing-away, and explained under what conditions they are predicable, of what subject, and owing to what cause. Similarly, (30) we have also discussed ‘alteration’, and explained what ‘altering’ is and how it differs from coming-to-be and passing-away. But we have still to investigate the so-called �
�elements’ of bodies.

  For the complex substances whose formation and maintenance are due to natural processes all presuppose the perceptible bodies as the condition of their coming-to-be and passing-away: but philosophers disagree in regard to the matter which underlies these perceptible bodies. Some maintain it is single, supposing it to be, e. g., Air or Fire, or an ‘intermediate’ between these two (but still a body with a separate existence). (35) Others, on the contrary, postulate two or more materials—ascribing to their ‘association’ and ‘dissociation’, or to their ‘alteration’, the coming-to-be and passing-away of things. [329a] (Some, for instance, postulate Fire and Earth: some add Air, making three: and some, like Empedocles, reckon Water as well, thus postulating four.) (5)

  Now we may agree that the primary materials, whose change (whether it be ‘association and dissociation’ or a process of another kind) results in coming-to-be and passing-away, are rightly described as ‘originative sources, i. e. elements’. But (i) those thinkers are in error who postulate, beside the bodies we have mentioned, (10) a single matter—and that a corporeal and separable matter. For this ‘body’ of theirs cannot possibly exist without a ‘perceptible contrariety’: this ‘Boundless’, which some thinkers identify with the ‘original real’, must be either light or heavy, either cold or hot.1 And (ii) what Plato has written in the Timaeus is not based on any precisely-articulated conception. (15) For he has not stated clearly whether his ‘Omnirecipient’2 exists in separation from the ‘elements’; nor does he make any use of it. He says, indeed, that it is a substratum prior to the so-called ‘elements’—underlying them, as gold underlies the things that are fashioned of gold. (And yet this comparison, if thus expressed, (20) is itself open to criticism. Things which come-to-be, and pass-away cannot be called by the name of the material out of which they have come-to-be: it is only the results of ‘alteration’ which retain the name of the substratum whose ‘alterations’ they are. However, he actually says3 that ‘far the truest account is to affirm that each of them4 is “gold” ’.) Nevertheless he carries his analysis of the ‘elements’—solids though they are—back to ‘planes’,5 and it is impossible for ‘the Nurse’6 (i. e. the primary matter) to be identical with the ‘planes’.

  Our own doctrine is that although there is a matter of the perceptible bodies (a matter out of which the so-called ’elements come-to-be), (25) it has no separate existence, but is always bound up with a contrariety. A more precise account of these presuppositions has been given in another work7: we must, however, give a detailed explanation of the primary bodies as well, (30) since they too are similarly derived from the matter. We must reckon as an ‘originative source’ and as ‘primary’ the matter which underlies, though it is inseparable from, the contrary qualities: for ‘the hot’ is not matter for ‘the cold’ nor ‘the cold’ for ‘the hot’, but the substratum is matter for them both. We therefore have to recognize three ‘originative sources’: firstly that which is potentially perceptible body, secondly the contrarieties (I mean, e. g., heat and cold), and thirdly Fire, (35) Water, and the like. Only ‘thirdly’, however: for these bodies change into one another (they are not immutable as Empedocles and other thinkers assert, since ‘alteration’ would then have been impossible), whereas the contrarieties do not change. [329b]

  Nevertheless, even so8 the question remains: What sorts of contrarieties, and how many of them, are to be accounted ‘originative sources’ of body? For all the other thinkers assume and use them without explaining why they are these or why they are just so many. (5)

  2 Since, then, we are looking for ‘originative sources’ of perceptible body; and since ‘perceptible’ is equivalent9 to ‘tangible’, and ‘tangible’ is that of which the perception is touch; it is clear that not all the contrarieties constitute ‘forms’ and ‘originative sources’ of body, but only those which correspond to touch. For it is in accordance with a contrariety—a contrariety, (10) moreover, of tangible qualities—that the primary bodies are differentiated. That is why neither whiteness (and blackness), nor sweetness (and bitterness), nor (similarly) any quality belonging to the other10 perceptible contrarieties either, constitutes an ‘element’. And yet vision is prior to touch, so that its object also is prior to the object of touch. The object of vision, (15) however, is a quality of tangible body not qua tangible, but qua something else—qua something which may well be naturally prior to the object of touch.

  Accordingly, we must segregate the tangible differences and contrarieties, and distinguish which amongst them are primary. Contrarieties correlative to touch are the following: hot-cold, dry-moist, heavy-light, hard-soft, viscous-brittle, rough-smooth, (20) coarse-fine. Of these (i) heavy and light are neither active nor susceptible. Things are not called ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ because they act upon, or suffer action from, other things. But the ‘elements’ must be reciprocally active and susceptible, since they ‘combine’ and are transformed into one another. On the other hand (ii) hot and cold, and dry and moist, (25) are terms, of which the first pair implies power to act and the second pair susceptibility. ‘Hot’ is that which ‘associates’ things of the same kind (for ‘dissociating’, which people attribute to Fire as its function, is ‘associating’ things of the same class, since its effect is to eliminate what is foreign), (30) while ‘cold’ is that which brings together, i. e. ‘associates’, homogeneous and heterogeneous things alike. And ‘moist’ is that which, being readily adaptable in shape, is not determinable by any limit of its own: while ‘dry’ is that which is readily determinable by its own limit, but not readily adaptable in shape.

  From moist and dry are derived (iii) the fine and coarse, viscous and brittle, hard and soft, and the remaining tangible differences. (35) For (a) since the moist has no determinate shape, but is readily adaptable and follows the outline of that which is in contact with it, it is characteristic of it to be ‘such as to fill up’. [330a] Now ‘the fine’ is ‘such as to fill up.’ For ‘the fine’ consists of subtle particles; but that which consists of small particles is ‘such as to fill up’, inasmuch as it is in contact11 whole with whole—and ‘the fine’ exhibits this character12 in a superlative degree. Hence it is evident that the fine derives from the moist, while the coarse derives from the dry. Again (b) ‘the viscous’ derives from the moist: (5) for ‘the viscous’ (e. g. oil) is a ‘moist’ modified in a certain way. ‘The brittle’, on the other hand, derives from the dry: for ‘brittle’ is that which is completely dry—so completely, that its solidification has actually been due to failure of moisture. Further (c) ‘the soft’ derives from the moist. For ‘soft’ is that which yields to pressure by retiring into itself, (10) though it does not yield by total displacement as the moist does—which explains why the moist is not ‘soft’, although ‘the soft’ derives from the moist. ‘The hard’, on the other hand, derives from the dry: for ‘hard’ is that which is solidified, and the solidified is dry.

  The terms ‘dry’ and ‘moist’ have more senses than one. For ‘the damp’, as well as the moist, is opposed to the dry: and again ‘the solidified’, as well as the dry, is opposed to the moist. (15) But all these qualities derive from the dry and moist we mentioned first.13 For (i) the dry is opposed to the damp: i. e. ‘damp’ is that which has foreign moisture on its surface (‘sodden’ being that which is penetrated to its core14), while ‘dry’15 is that which has lost foreign moisture. Hence it is evident that the damp will derive from the moist, and ‘the dry’ which is opposed to it will derive from the primary dry. (20) Again (ii) the ‘moist’ and the solidified derive in the same way from the primary pair. For ‘moist’16 is that which contains moisture of its own deep within it (‘sodden’ being that which is deeply penetrated by foreign moisture), whereas ‘solidified’ is that which has lost this inner moisture. Hence these too derive from the primary pair, the ‘solidified’ from the dry and the ‘liquefiable’ from the moist.

  It is clear, then, that all the other differences reduce to th
e first four, (25) but that these admit of no further reduction. For the hot is not essentially moist or dry, nor the moist essentially hot or cold: nor are the cold and the dry derivative forms, either of one another or of the hot and the moist. Hence these must be four.

  3 The elementary qualities are four, and any four terms can be combined in six couples. (30) Contraries, however, refuse to be coupled: for it is impossible for the same thing to be hot and cold, or moist and dry. Hence it is evident that the ‘couplings’ of the elementary qualities will be four: hot with dry and moist with hot, and again cold with dry and cold with moist. [330b] And these four couples have attached themselves to the apparently ‘simple’ bodies (Fire, Air, Water, and Earth) in a manner consonant with theory. For Fire is hot and dry, whereas Air is hot and moist (Air being a sort of aqueous vapour); and Water is cold and moist, (5) while Earth is cold and dry. Thus the differences are reasonably distributed among the primary bodies, and the number of the latter is consonant with theory. For all who make the simple bodies ‘elements’ postulate either one, or two, or three, or four. Now (i) those who assert there is one only, (10) and then generate everything else by condensation and rarefaction, are in effect making their ‘originative sources’ two, viz. the rare and the dense, or rather the hot and the cold: for it is these which are the moulding forces, while the ‘one’ underlies them as a ‘matter’. But (ii) those who postulate two from the start—as Parmenides postulated Fire and Earth—make the intermediates (e. g. Air and Water) blends of these. (15) The same course is followed (iii) by those who advocate three. (We may compare what Plato does in ‘The Divisions’: for he makes ‘the middle’ a blend.) Indeed, there is practically no difference between those who postulate two and those who postulate three, except that the former split the middle ‘element’ into two, while the latter treat it as only one. But (iv) some advocate four from the start, (20) e. g. Empedocles: yet he too draws them together so as to reduce them to the two, for he opposes all the others to Fire.