The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

  8 Now let us, to begin with, make certain distinctions about sound and hearing. (5)

  Sound may mean either of two things—(a) actual, and (b) potential, sound. There are certain things which, as we say, ‘have no sound’, e. g. sponges or wool, others which have, e. g. bronze and in general all things which are smooth and solid—the latter are said to have a sound because they can make a sound, i. e. can generate actual sound between themselves and the organ of hearing.

  Actual sound requires for its occurrence (i, ii) two such bodies and (iii) a space between them; for it is generated by an impact. (10) Hence it is impossible for one body only to generate a sound—there must be a body impinging and a body impinged upon; what sounds does so by striking against something else, and this is impossible without a movement from place to place.

  As we have said, not all bodies can by impact on one another produce sound; impact on wool makes no sound, (15) while the impact on bronze or any body which is smooth and hollow does. Bronze gives out a sound when struck because it is smooth; bodies which are hollow owing to reflection repeat the original impact over and over again, the body originally set in movement being unable to escape from the concavity.

  Further, we must remark that sound is heard both in air and in water, though less distinctly in the latter. Yet neither air nor water is the principal cause of sound. (20) What is required for the production of sound is an impact of two solids against one another and against the air. The latter condition is satisfied when the air impinged upon does not retreat before the blow, i. e. is not dissipated by it.

  That is why it must be struck with a sudden sharp blow, if it is to sound—the movement of the whip must outrun the dispersion of the air, just as one might get in a stroke at a heap or whirl of sand as it was travelling rapidly past.

  An echo occurs, (25) when, a mass of air having been unified, bounded, and prevented from dissipation by the containing walls of a vessel, the air originally struck by the impinging body and set in movement by it rebounds from this mass of air like a ball from a wall. It is probable that in all generation of sound echo takes place, though it is frequently only indistinctly heard. What happens here must be analogous to what happens in the case of light; light is always reflected—otherwise it would not be diffused and outside what was directly illuminated by the sun there would be blank darkness; but this reflected light is not always strong enough, (30) as it is when it is reflected from water, bronze, and other smooth bodies, to cast a shadow, which is the distinguishing mark by which we recognize light.

  It is rightly said that an empty space plays the chief part in the production of hearing, for what people mean by ‘the vacuum’ is the air, which is what causes hearing, when that air is set in movement as one continuous mass; but owing to its friability it emits no sound, (35) being dissipated by impinging upon any surface which is not smooth. [420a] When the surface on which it impinges is quite smooth, what is produced by the original impact is a united mass, a result due to the smoothness of the surface with which the air is in contact at the other end.

  What has the power of producing sound is what has the power of setting in movement a single mass of air which is continuous from the impinging body up to the organ of hearing. The organ of hearing is physically united with air,34 and because it is in air, the air inside is moved concurrently with the air outside. Hence animals do not hear with all parts of their bodies, (5) nor do all parts admit of the entrance of air; for even the part which can be moved and can sound has not air everywhere in it. Air in itself is, owing to its friability, quite soundless; only when its dissipation is prevented is its movement sound. The air in the ear is built into a chamber just to prevent this dissipating movement, in order that the animal may accurately apprehend all varieties of the movements of the air outside. (10) That is why we hear also in water, viz. because the water cannot get into the air chamber or even, owing to the spirals, into the outer ear. If this does happen, hearing ceases, as it also does if the tympanic membrane is damaged, just as sight ceases if the membrane covering the pupil is damaged. It is also a test of deafness whether the ear does or does not reverberate like a horn; the air inside the ear has always a movement of its own, (15) but the sound we hear is always the sounding of something else, not of the organ itself. That is why we say that we hear with what is empty and echoes, viz. because what we hear with is a chamber which contains a bounded mass of air.

  Which is it that ‘sounds’, the striking body or the struck? Is not the answer ‘it is both, but each in a different way’? Sound is a movement of what can rebound from a smooth surface when struck against it. (20) As we have explained35 not everything sounds when it strikes or is struck, e. g. if one needle is struck against another, (25) neither emits any sound. In order, therefore, that sound may be generated, what is struck must be smooth, to enable the air to rebound and be shaken off from it in one piece.

  The distinctions between different sounding bodies show themselves only in actual sound;36 as without the help of light colours remain invisible, so without the help of actual sound the distinctions between acute and grave sounds remain inaudible. Acute and grave are here metaphors, transferred from their proper sphere, viz. that of touch, (30) where they mean respectively (a) what moves the sense much in a short time, (b) what moves the sense little in a long time. Not that what is sharp really moves fast, and what is grave, slowly, but that the difference in the qualities of the one and the other movement is due to their respective speeds. [420b] There seems to be a sort of parallelism between what is acute or grave to hearing and what is sharp or blunt to touch; what is sharp as it were stabs, while what is blunt pushes, the one producing its effect in a short, the other in a long time, so that the one is quick, the other slow.

  Let the foregoing suffice as an analysis of sound. (5) Voice is a kind of sound characteristic of what has soul in it; nothing that is without soul utters voice, it being only by a metaphor that we speak of the voice of the flute or the lyre or generally of what (being without soul) possesses the power of producing a succession of notes which differ in length and pitch and timbre. The metaphor is based on the fact that all these differences are found also in voice. Many animals are voiceless, e. g. all non-sanguineous animals and among sanguineous animals fish. (10) This is just what we should expect, since voice is a certain movement of air. The fish, like those in the Achelous, which are said to have voice, really make the sounds with their gills or some similar organ. Voice is the sound made by an animal, and that with a special organ. As we saw, everything that makes a sound does so by the impact of something (a) against something else, (b) across a space, (15) (c) filled with air; hence it is only to be expected that no animals utter voice except those which take in air. Once air is inbreathed, Nature uses it for two different purposes, as the tongue is used both for tasting and for articulating; in that case of the two functions tasting is necessary for the animal’s existence (hence it is found more widely distributed), while articulate speech is a luxury subserving its possessor’s well-being; similarly in the former case Nature employs the breath both as an indispensable means to the regulation of the inner temperature of the living body and also as the matter of articulate voice, (20) in the interests of its possessor’s well-being. Why its former use is indispensable must be discussed elsewhere.37

  The organ of respiration is the windpipe, and the organ to which this is related as means to end is the lungs. The latter is the part of the body by which the temperature of land animals is raised above that of all others. But what primarily requires the air drawn in by respiration is not only this but the region surrounding the heart. (25) That is why when animals breathe the air must penetrate inwards.

  Voice then is the impact of the inbreathed air against the ‘windpipe’, and the agent that produces the impact is the soul resident in these parts of the body. Not every sound, as we said, (30) made by an animal is voice (even with the tongue we may merely make a sound which is not voice, or without the tongue a
s in coughing); what produces the impact must have soul in it and must be accompanied by an act of imagination, for voice is a sound with a meaning, and is not merely the result of any impact of the breath as in coughing; in voice the breath in the windpipe is used as an instrument to knock with against the walls of the windpipe. [421a] This is confirmed by our inability to speak when we are breathing either out or in—we can only do so by holding our breath; we make the movements with the breath so checked. It is clear also why fish are voiceless; they have no windpipe. And they have no windpipe because they do not breathe or take in air. (5) Why they do not is a question belonging to another inquiry.38

  9 Smell and its object are much less easy to determine than what we have hitherto discussed; the distinguishing characteristic of the object of smell is less obvious than those of sound or colour. The ground of this is that our power of smell is less discriminating and in general inferior to that of many species of animals; men have a poor sense of smell and our apprehension of its proper objects is inseparably bound up with and so confused by pleasure and pain, (10) which shows that in us the organ is inaccurate. It is probable that there is a parallel failure in the perception of colour by animals that have hard eyes: probably they discriminate differences of colour only by the presence or absence of what excites fear, and that it is thus that human beings distinguish smells. (15) It seems that there is an analogy between smell and taste, and that the species of tastes run parallel to those of smells—the only difference being that our sense of taste is more discriminating than our sense of smell, because the former is a modification of touch, which reaches in man the maximum of discriminative accuracy. (20) While in respect of all the other senses we fall below many species of animals, in respect of touch we far excel all other species in exactness of discrimination. That is why man is the most intelligent of all animals. This is confirmed by the fact that it is to differences in the organ of touch and to nothing else that the differences between man and man in respect of natural endowment are due; men whose flesh is hard are ill-endowed by nature, (25) men whose flesh is soft, well-endowed.

  As flavours may be divided into (a) sweet, (b) bitter, so with smells. In some things the flavour and the smell have the same quality, i. e. both are sweet or both bitter, in others they diverge. Similarly a smell, (30) like a flavour, may be pungent, astringent, acid, or succulent. But, as we said, because smells are much less easy to discriminate than flavours, the names of these varieties are applied to smells only metaphorically; for example ‘sweet’ is extended from the taste to the smell of saffron or honey, ‘pungent’ to that of thyme, and so on.39 [421b]

  In the same sense in which hearing has for its object both the audible and the inaudible, (5) sight both the visible and the invisible, smell has for its object both the odorous and the inodorous. ‘Inodorous’ may be either (a) what has no smell at all, or (b) what has a small or feeble smell. The same ambiguity lurks in the word ‘tasteless’.

  Smelling, like the operation of the senses previously examined, takes place through a medium, i. e. through air or water—I add water, (10) because water-animals too (both sanguineous and non-sanguineous) seem to smell just as much as land-animals; at any rate some of them make directly for their food from a distance if it has any scent. That is why the following facts constitute a problem for us. All animals smell in the same way, but man smells only when he inhales; if he exhales or holds his breath, (15) he ceases to smell, no difference being made whether the odorous object is distant or near, or even placed inside the nose and actually on the wall of the nostril; it is a disability common to all the senses not to perceive what is in immediate contact with the organ of sense, but our failure to apprehend what is odorous without the help of inhalation is peculiar (the fact is obvious on making the experiment). Now since bloodless animals do not breathe, they must, it might be argued, have some novel sense not reckoned among the usual five. (20) Our reply must be that this is impossible, since it is scent that is perceived; a sense that apprehends what is odorous and what has a good or bad odour cannot be anything but smell. Further, they are observed to be deleteriously affected by the same strong odours as man is, e. g. bitumen, sulphur, and the like. (25) These animals must be able to smell without being able to breathe. The probable explanation is that in man the organ of smell has a certain superiority over that in all other animals just as his eyes have over those of hard-eyed animals. Man’s eyes have in the eyelids a kind of shelter or envelope, which must be shifted or drawn back in order that we may see, while hard-eyed animals have nothing of the kind, (30) but at once see whatever presents itself in the transparent medium. Similarly in certain species of animals the organ of smell is like the eye of hard-eyed animals, uncurtained, while in others which take in air it probably has a curtain over it, which is drawn back in inhalation, owing to the dilating of the veins or pores. [422a] That explains also why such animals cannot smell under water; to smell they must first inhale, (5) and that they cannot do under water.

  Smells come from what is dry as flavours from what is moist. Consequently the organ of smell is potentially dry.

  10 What can be tasted is always something that can be touched, and just for that reason it cannot be perceived through an interposed foreign body, for touch means the absence of any intervening body. (10) Further, the flavoured and tasteable body is suspended in a liquid matter, and this is tangible. Hence, if we lived in water, we should perceive a sweet object introduced into the water, but the water would not be the medium through which we perceived; our perception would be due to the solution of the sweet substance in what we imbibed, just as if it were mixed with some drink. There is no parallel here to the perception of colour, which is due neither to any blending of anything with anything, nor to any efflux of anything from anything. In the case of taste, there is nothing corresponding to the medium in the case of the senses previously discussed; but as the object of sight is colour, (15) so the object of taste is flavour. But nothing excites a perception of flavour without the help of liquid; what acts upon the sense of taste must be either actually or potentially liquid like what is saline; it must be both (a) itself easily dissolved, and (b) capable of dissolving along with itself the tongue. (20) Taste apprehends both (a) what has taste and (b) what has no taste, if we mean by (b) what has only a slight or feeble flavour or what tends to destroy the sense of taste. In this it is exactly parallel to sight, which apprehends both what is visible and what is invisible (for darkness is invisible and yet is discriminated by sight; so is, in a different way, what is over-brilliant), and to hearing, which apprehends both sound and silence, of which the one is audible and the other inaudible, (25) and also over-loud sound. This corresponds in the case of hearing to over-bright light in the case of sight. As a faint sound is ‘inaudible’, so in a sense is a loud or violent sound. The word ‘invisible’ and similar privative terms cover not only (a) what is simply without some power, but also (b) what is adapted by nature to have it but has not it or has it only in a very low degree, as when we say that a species of swallow is ‘footless’ or that a variety of fruit is ‘stoneless’. So too taste has as its object both what can be tasted and the tasteless—the latter in the sense of what has little flavour or a bad flavour or one destructive of taste. (30) The difference between what is tasteless and what is not seems to rest ultimately on that between what is drinkable and what is undrinkable—both are tasteable, but the latter is bad and tends to destroy taste, while the former is the normal stimulus of taste. What is drinkable is the common object of both touch and taste. [422b]

  Since what can be tasted is liquid, the organ for its perception cannot be either (a) actually liquid or (b) incapable of becoming liquid. Tasting means a being affected by40 what can be tasted as such; hence the organ of taste must be liquefied, and so to start with must be non-liquid but capable of liquefaction without loss of its distinctive nature. (5) This is confirmed by the fact that the tongue cannot taste either when it is too dry or when it is too moist; in th
e latter case what occurs is due to a contact with the pre-existent moisture in the tongue itself, when after a foretaste of some strong flavour we try to taste another flavour; it is in this way that sick persons find everything they taste bitter, viz. because, when they taste, their tongues are overflowing with bitter moisture.

  The species of flavour are, (10) as in the case of colour, (a) simple, i. e. the two contraries, the sweet and the bitter, (b) secondary, viz. (i) on the side of the sweet, the succulent, (ii) on the side of the bitter, the saline, (iii) between these come the pungent, the harsh, the astringent, and the acid; these pretty well exhaust the varieties of flavour. (15) It follows that what has the power of tasting is what is potentially of that kind, and that what is tasteable is what has the power of making it actually what it itself already is.

  11 Whatever can be said of what is tangible, can be said of touch, and vice versa; if touch is not a single sense but a group of senses, there must be several kinds of what is tangible. It is a problem whether touch is a single sense or a group of senses. It is also a problem, (20) what is the organ of touch; is it or is it not the flesh (including what in certain animals is homologous with flesh)? On the second view, flesh is ‘the medium’ of touch, the real organ being situated farther inward. The problem arises because the field of each sense is according to the accepted view determined as the range between a single pair of contraries, white and black for sight, acute and grave for hearing, bitter and sweet for taste; but in the field of what is tangible we find several such pairs, (25) hot cold, dry moist, hard soft, &c. This problem finds a partial solution, when it is recalled that in the case of the other senses more than one pair of contraries are to be met with, e. g. in sound not only acute and grave but loud and soft, (30) smooth and rough, &c.; there are similar contrasts in the field of colour. Nevertheless we are unable clearly to detect in the case of touch what the single subject is which underlies the contrasted qualities and corresponds to sound in the case of hearing.