Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

by Pamela Mensch

  49 50 We must also believe that it is when something from the external objects enters us that we see and think of them; for external objects could not stamp in us the nature of their own color and shape through the air that is between them and us, nor by means of the rays of light or any sorts of currents that travel from us to them, but rather by the entrance into our eyes or minds (as their size determines) of certain rapidly moving outlines that have the same color and shape as the external objects themselves; the same cause explains how they present the appearance of a single, continuous object and preserve their mutual interconnection at a distance from the substratum, their corresponding impact on our senses being due to the oscillation of the atoms in the solid object from which they come.

  And whatever image we derive by focusing the mind or the sense organs, whether on the object’s shape or its concomitant properties, this shape is the shape of the solid object and is due either to the continuous compacting or to the residue of the image. Falsehood and error always reside in the added opinion [when a fact is awaiting confirmation or the absence of contradiction, which fact is subsequently not confirmed by virtue of an immovable opinion in ourselves that is linked to the imaginative impression, but distinct from it; it is this that gives rise to the falsehood].76 For impressions like those received from a picture, or arising in dreams, or from any other form of apprehension by the mind, or by the other criteria, would not have resembled what we call the real and true things had it not been for certain actual things on which we had cast our eyes. Error would not have occurred unless we had experienced some other movement in ourselves that was linked to, but distinct from, the apprehension of the impression; and from this movement, if it is not confirmed or is contradicted, falsehood results; whereas if it is confirmed, or not contradicted, truth results. And to this view we must adhere, lest the criteria based on clear evidence be repudiated, or error, strengthened in the same way, throw all these things into confusion.

  51 52 Study for Thought Complex, by Agnes Denes, 1970. Ink on graph paper, 28.6 x 21.6 cm.

  53 Moreover, hearing occurs when a stream emanates from the person or thing that emits a sound, voice, or noise, or stimulates in any way whatsoever our auditory sense. This stream is dispersed into homogeneous masses, which at the same time retain a mutual connection and a distinctive unity, extending back to their source and thus for the most part producing the perception themselves, or at any rate indicating their external source; for without a certain interconnection that is transmitted from it, such a perception would not arise. Accordingly, one must not believe that the air itself is shaped by the sound being emitted or anything of the kind, for it is far from being the case that it is affected in this way by the voice. The blow that is struck within us whenever we utter a sound causes an expelling of masses suitable for producing a breathlike stream; and it is this stream that gives rise to the sensation of hearing.

  Furthermore, we must believe that where smell is concerned, just as with sound, the experience would not occur unless masses emanated from the object that are the proper kind for stimulating the organ of smell, some of them exciting it disturbingly and strangely, others soothingly and familiarly.

  54 55 Furthermore, we must believe that the atoms possess none of the qualities of phenomena except shape, weight, size, and all the properties necessarily bound up with shape. For every quality changes; but the atoms do not change at all, since something must remain solid and indissoluble in the dissolutions of the compounds—something that will ensure that changes are not into the nonexistent or from the nonexistent, but come about by rearrangements in many cases, and sometimes also by additions and subtractions. Hence it is necessary that the things that are rearranged be indestructible and unchangeable, and that they possess their own masses and characteristic shapes. For it is necessary that these things remain unchanged. For even when things in our experience change their shapes by the removal of matter, we grasp that the shape is inherent, while the qualities are not; unlike the shape, which is left behind, the qualities vanish entirely from the body. Thus the elements that are left behind are sufficient to account for the differences among the compounds, since it is necessary that some things be left behind and not pass into nonexistence.

  56 57 58 59 Furthermore, we should not believe that atoms are of all sizes, lest the evidence prove us wrong; instead we should admit that there are some variations in size. For this will make it easier to explain what, according to our feelings and sensations, actually happens. But the notion that every magnitude exists does not help to explain the differences of quality, since in that case visible atoms should have reached us, which has not been seen to occur; nor is it possible to conceive how an atom could become visible. Besides this, we must not believe there can be an unlimited number of masses, no matter how small, in any finite body. Accordingly, not only must we reject unlimited division into smaller pieces, lest we make everything weak, and in our conceptions of compound things be forced to squeeze existing things into nonexistence; we must also not believe that the passages in finite bodies can be divided infinitely or into smaller and smaller increments. For it is not possible, once one says that the masses in an entity, however small they may be, are infinite in number, to conceive how the entity could be limited in size. For it is clear that the unlimited number of masses are of some size; accordingly, no matter how small they are, their aggregate would be infinitely large. And given that when something is finite its limit is distinct, even if one cannot observe it, it is not possible not to think of another such entity placed beside it; and it is therefore possible, when mentally adding one such entity to the next, to arrive in thought at infinity. We must conceive of the smallest perceptible mass as neither similar to one that can be traversed, nor as wholly dissimilar to it, but as having something in common with those that can be traversed, though parts cannot be distinguished in it. But whenever, by reason of the resemblance created by this common property, we think we will distinguish something in it—one part here, the other there—we must be encountering something else of equal size. We discern these one after another, beginning with the first, and not as occupying the same space or as touching each other’s parts; instead we see them measuring out magnitudes in their characteristic way, more of them measuring out a larger magnitude, fewer of them a smaller. We must consider that this analogy also applies to the smallest part in the atom. For clearly, only in its minuteness does it differ from what is observed by the senses, though the same analogy applies. For precisely because of this analogy we have asserted that the atom has magnitude; we have merely projected something small onto a larger scale. Furthermore, we must regard the smallest and indivisible parts as the limits of lengths, furnishing from themselves as units the means of measuring the lengths of larger or smaller atoms, when we mentally contemplate invisible realities. For what the atoms have in common with things that do not admit of any passage is sufficient to take us this far. But it is not possible for these smallest parts to form compounds, supposing that they possessed motion.

  Fresco showing a globe, also identified as a sundial, from the peristyle of the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, Roman, c. 50–40 BC.

  60 Furthermore, one must not assert that the unlimited has an up or down as if it had a highest and lowest point. Yet we know that what is overhead from where we stand, or what is below any point we can conceive of (it being possible to extend a line indefinitely in either direction), will never appear to us as being simultaneously up and down in relation to the same point; for this is inconceivable. Consequently, it is possible to grasp as one the motion thought of as extending indefinitely upward and the motion thought of as extending indefinitely downward, even if it should happen ten thousand times that what moves from us to the places above our heads arrives at the feet of those above us, or that what moves downward from us arrives at the heads of those below. Nevertheless the entire motion, in both cases, is conceived of as extending indefinitely in opposite directions.


  Bronze box mirror with the head of the god Pan in relief, Greek, late fourth century BC.

  61 62 Furthermore, it is also necessary that the atoms possess equal velocity whenever they travel through the void without meeting resistance. Neither will the heavy atom travel faster than the small and light in the absence of resistance, nor will the small travel faster than the large, provided that all of them find passageways of suitable size and nothing hinders them; nor will their upward or lateral motion, which is due to collisions, nor their downward motion, due to weight, affect their velocity. For to whatever distance each motion continues, it does so at the speed of thought until it meets with resistance, either from an external source or from the atom’s own weight counteracting the force of a blow. But in the case of compounds, some will travel faster than others, though the atoms themselves travel at the same velocity; this is because the atoms in the compounds travel in one direction in the shortest continuous time, even if they do so in intervals too brief for the mind to register; but they frequently collide, until the continuity of their motion is registered by the senses. For the additional assumption about the invisible, namely that the intervals of time distinguishable by reason will afford continuity of motion, is not true in such cases; for everything that can be observed by the senses or apprehended by the mind is true.

  63 64 65 66 67 68 Next, we must consider, by referring to our sensations and feelings (for it is here that we will find the strongest confirmation of our beliefs), that the soul is a body made up of finely structured parts distributed throughout the aggregate, and most closely resembling breath with a certain admixture of heat, in one way resembling breath and in another resembling heat. But there is the part that greatly exceeds these others in the fineness of its particles and is therefore in closer harmony with the rest of the aggregate. The soul’s faculties make all of this apparent, as do its feelings, its ease of motion, its processes of thought, and the things by the loss of which we would die. Furthermore, we must keep in mind that the soul is most responsible for the capacity for sensation; but it would not have had this capacity if it were not somehow enclosed by the rest of the aggregate. But the rest of the aggregate, though it has furnished this condition to the soul, gets a share of it itself; yet it does not retain all of the soul’s properties, which is why, when the soul departs, it loses sensation. For the body did not acquire this power all by itself; instead, something else that grew together with it imparted it to the body; this something, through the power imparted to it by motion, immediately acquired for itself a capacity for sensation, and then, thanks to the proximity and interconnection of body and soul, imparted it to the body, just as I said. That is why the soul, as long as it remains in the body, will never lose sensation even if some other part is removed. But no matter what parts of it are destroyed along with the dissolution of its envelope (whether in whole or in part), if the soul survives, it will have sensation. But the rest of the aggregate, whether all of it or only a part, will no longer have sensation even if it survives, once those atoms that make up the nature of the soul, however small their number, have departed. Furthermore, when the entire aggregate is destroyed, the soul is dissipated and no longer has the same powers or mobility, so that it no longer possesses sensation. For it is not possible to think that it is capable of sensation if it is not in this complex and not performing these movements, when its surrounding envelope is not such as now contains it and makes these movements possible. [He says that the soul is composed of the smoothest and roundest of atoms, which are greatly superior in this respect to those that constitute fire. One part of it, which is irrational, is diffused throughout the body; the rational part, on the other hand, resides in the chest, as is evident when we experience fear and joy. Sleep occurs when the parts of the soul that have been scattered throughout the aggregate are either contained or dispersed, and subsequently collide with one another by their impacts. Our semen is derived from the body as a whole.] We must also consider this: that the term “incorporeal,” according to the most widespread usage, is applied to what can be conceived of as self-existent. But it is not possible to regard anything incorporeal as self-existent except the void. And the void can neither act nor be acted upon, but merely allows bodies to move through it. Accordingly, those who say that the soul is incorporeal talk nonsense. For if it were incorporeal, it could neither act nor be acted upon; but as it happens, both of these properties are distinctly grasped as accidents of the soul. Accordingly, when we refer all these arguments about the soul to our feelings and sensations, bearing in mind the premises stated at the outset, we will see that they have been adequately comprehended in the outlines, and hence we will be able, on this basis, to work out the details with accuracy and confidence.

  Guest, by Christopher Bucklow, 1995. Silver dye bleach print, 100.6 x 76.2 cm.

  69 Yet the shapes, colors, magnitudes, weights, and all those qualities that are predicated of a body, insofar as they are accidents either of all bodies or of visible bodies, are knowable in themselves by sensation; and we must think of them not as having their own independent existence (for that is inconceivable), or as wholly nonexistent, or as alien incorporeal entities clinging to body, or as parts of body; instead we must think of the whole body as deriving its permanent nature from all of them; but it is not, as it were, formed by their aggregation—as when a large aggregate is built up from the masses themselves, whether these masses are primary or any magnitudes smaller than the given whole; instead, as I say, it is only from all of these that a body derives its own permanent nature. And all of them have their own characteristic ways of being perceived and distinguished, always in conjunction with the aggregate and in no way separated from it; for it is by being conceived of as a whole that the body is referred to as such.

  70 71 Furthermore, accidents often attend bodies without becoming permanent concomitants; they are neither invisible nor incorporeal. Accordingly, when we use the term “accidents,” we make it clear that these properties have neither the nature of the whole thing to which they belong—the entity that we, conceiving of it as a whole, call a body—nor that of the permanent properties without which one cannot conceive of a body. Each of these “accidents” could be referred to according to certain apprehensions of the aggregate that accompanies them, though only when each is actually seen to accompany the body, since such accidents are not permanent. One need not banish from reality this clear evidence that the impermanent accidents do not have the nature of the whole that they accompany, which we call body, nor of the permanent properties that accompany the whole. Nor should we suppose, on the other hand, that the impermanent accidents have independent existence, since this is not conceivable either in their case or in the case of permanent properties; on the contrary, as is evident, they should all be regarded as accidents, not as permanent concomitants, of bodies, nor as things that have the status of independently existing entities. Instead, they are seen to be exactly as sensation itself characterizes them.

  72 73 We should also pay the utmost attention to the following point. We must not investigate time as we do other things in a subject or substratum, that is, by reference to our own mental preconceptions; instead, we must examine the bare fact itself, in light of which we speak of time as being long or short, since we possess a sense of it. We need not use new terms as though they were preferable, but should employ the existing ones; nor should we attribute any other thing to time, as if this other thing shared the property that we attribute to time (for there are some who do so), but should only consider that to which we connect this property and by which we measure it. For this requires no demonstration; we need only reflect that we apply the notion of time to the days and nights and their parts, just as we do to states of emotion and apathy, and to motion and rest, conceiving in connection with them this very particular property to which we give the name “time.” [He also says this in the second book of his work On Nature and in the Greater Epitome.]

  74 In addition to th
e above, we must also consider that worlds and every finite compound that closely resembles things we commonly see have arisen out of the unlimited, since all of these, whether large or small, have been separated off from particular aggregates of atoms; and all things are again dissolved, some faster, some slower, some through one set of causes, some through another. [Hence it is clear that he also regards worlds as perishable, 75 76since their parts undergo change. Elsewhere he asserts that the earth is supported on the air.] Furthermore, we should not suppose that the worlds necessarily have only one shape <…> [Indeed, he himself says in the twelfth book of his work On Nature that their shapes differ; for some are spherical, others egg-shaped, and still others of different shapes. Nevertheless, they are not of every shape. Nor are they living beings that have been separated from the unlimited.77] For no one could prove that a world of one sort might not have contained the sorts of seeds from which animals and plants and all other visible things are formed, or that another sort of world could not possibly contain them. [The same holds true of their nurture. And one must believe that it also happens likewise on the earth.]