The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

  Nor is Anaxagoras right about the coming to be of homogeneous bodies. It is true there is a sense in which clay is divided into pieces of clay, (15) but there is another in which it is not. Water and air are, and are generated, ‘from’ each other, but not in the way in which bricks come ‘from’ a house and again a house ‘from’ bricks; and it is better to assume a smaller and finite number of principles, as Empedocles does.

  5 All thinkers then agree in making the contraries principles, both those who describe the All as one and unmoved (for even Parmenides treats hot and cold as principles under the names of fire and earth) and those too who use the rare and the dense. (20) The same is true of Democritus also, with his plenum and void, both of which exist, he says, the one as being, the other as not-being. Again he speaks of differences in position, shape, and order, and these are genera of which the species are contraries, namely, of position, (25) above and below, before and behind; of shape, angular and angle-less, straight and round.

  It is plain then that they all in one way or another identify the contraries with the principles. And with good reason. For first principles must not be derived from one another nor from anything else, while everything has to be derived from them. But these conditions are fulfilled by the primary contraries, which are not derived from anything else because they are primary, nor from each other because they are contraries.

  But we must see how this can be arrived at as a reasoned result, (30) as well as in the way just indicated.

  Our first presupposition must be that in nature nothing acts on, or is acted on by, any other thing at random, nor may anything come from anything else, unless we mean that it does so in virtue of a concomitant attribute. For how could ‘white’ come from ‘musical’, (35) unless ‘musical’ happened to be an attribute of the not-white or of the black? No, ‘white’ comes from ‘not-white’—and not from any ‘not-white’, but from black or some intermediate colour. [188b] Similarly, ‘musical’ comes to be from ‘not-musical’, but not from any thing other than musical, but from ‘unmusical’ or any intermediate state there may be.

  Nor again do things pass into the first chance thing; ‘white’ does not pass into ‘musical’ (except, it may be, in virtue of a concomitant attribute), but into ‘not-white’—and not into any chance thing which is not white, but into black or an intermediate colour; ‘musical’ passes into ‘not-musical’—and not into any chance thing other than musical, (5) but into ‘unmusical’ or any intermediate state there may be.

  The same holds of other things also: even things which are not simple but complex follow the same principle, (10) but the opposite state has not received a name, so we fail to notice the fact. What is in tune must come from what is not in tune, and vice versa; the tuned passes into untunedness—and not into any untunedness, but into the corresponding opposite. It does not matter whether we take attunement, (15) order, or composition for our illustration; the principle is obviously the same in all, and in fact applies equally to the production of a house, a statue, or any other complex. A house comes from certain things in a certain state of separation instead of conjunction, a statue (or any other thing that has been shaped) from shapelessness—each of these objects being partly order and partly composition. (20)

  If then this is true, everything that comes to be or passes away comes from, or passes into, its contrary or an intermediate state. But the intermediates are derived from the contraries—colours, for instance, from black and white. Everything, (25) therefore, that comes to be by a natural process is either a contrary or a product of contraries.

  Up to this point we have practically had most of the other writers on the subject with us, as I have said already6: for all of them identify their elements, and what they call their principles, with the contraries, giving no reason indeed for the theory, (30) but constrained as it were by the truth itself. They differ, however, from one another in that some assume contraries which are more primary, others contraries which are less so: some those more knowable in the order of explanation, others those more familiar to sense. For some make hot and cold, or again moist and dry, the conditions of becoming; while others make odd and even, (35) or again Love and Strife; and these differ from each other in the way mentioned.

  Hence their principles are in one sense the same, in another different; different certainly, as indeed most people think, but the same inasmuch as they are analogous; for all are taken from the same table of columns,7 some of the pairs being wider, others narrower in extent. [189a] In this way then their theories are both the same and different, some better, some worse; some, as I have said, take as their contraries what is more knowable in the order of explanation, (5) others what is more familiar to sense. (The universal is more knowable in the order of explanation, the particular in the order of sense: for explanation has to do with the universal, sense with the particular.) ‘The great and the small’, for example, belong to the former class, ‘the dense and the rare’ to the latter.

  It is clear then that our principles must be contraries. (10)

  6 The next question is whether the principles are two or three or more in number.

  One they cannot be, for there cannot be one contrary. Nor can they be innumerable, because, if so, Being will not be knowable: and in any one genus there is only one contrariety, (15) and substance is one genus: also a finite number is sufficient, and a finite number, such as the principles of Empedocles, is better than an infinite multitude; for Empedocles professes to obtain from his principles all that Anaxagoras obtains from his innumerable principles. Lastly, some contraries are more primary than others, and some arise from others—for example sweet and bitter, white and black—whereas the principles must always remain principles.

  This will suffice to show that the principles are neither one nor innumerable. (20)

  Granted, then, that they are a limited number, it is plausible to suppose them more than two. For it is difficult to see how either density should be of such a nature as to act in any way on rarity or rarity on density. The same is true of any other pair of contraries; for Love does not gather Strife together and make things out of it, (25) nor does Strife make anything out of Love, but both act on a third thing different from both. Some indeed assume more than one such thing from which they construct the world of nature.

  Other objections to the view that it is not necessary to assume a third principle as a substratum may be added. (1) We do not find that the contraries constitute the substance of any thing. (30) But what is a first principle ought not to be the predicate of any subject. If it were, there would be a principle of the supposed principle: for the subject is a principle, and prior presumably to what is predicated of it. Again (2) we hold that a substance is not contrary to another substance. How then can substance be derived from what are not substances? Or how can non-substance be prior to substance?

  If then we accept both the former argument8 and this one,9 we must, to preserve both, assume a third somewhat as the substratum of the contraries, (35) such as is spoken of by those who describe the All as one nature—water or fire or what is intermediate between them. [189b] What is intermediate seems preferable; for fire, earth, air, and water are already involved with pairs of contraries. There is, therefore, much to be said for those who make the underlying substance different from these four; of the rest, the next best choice is air, as presenting sensible differences in a less degree than the others; and after air, water. All, however, agree in this, that they differentiate their One by means of the contraries, such as density and rarity and more and less, (10) which may of course be generalized, as has already been said,10 into excess and defect. Indeed this doctrine too (that the One and excess and defect are the principles of things) would appear to be of old standing, though in different forms; for the early thinkers made the two the active and the one the passive principle, whereas some of the more recent maintain the reverse. (15)

  To suppose then that the elements are three in number would seem, from these and sim
ilar considerations, a plausible view, as I said before.11 On the other hand, the view that they are more than three in number would seem to be untenable.

  For the one substratum is sufficient to be acted on; but if we have four contraries, there will be two contrarieties, and we shall have to suppose an intermediate nature for each pair separately. (20) If, on the other hand, the contrarieties, being two, can generate from each other, the second contrariety will be superfluous. Moreover, it is impossible that there should be more than one primary contrariety. For substance is a single genus of being, so that the principles can differ only as prior and posterior, (25) not in genus; in a single genus there is always a single contrariety, all the other contrarieties in it being held to be reducible to one.

  It is clear then that the number of elements is neither one nor more than two or three; but whether two or three is, as I said, a question of considerable difficulty.

  7 We will now give our own account, (30) approaching the question first with reference to becoming in its widest sense: for we shall be following the natural order of inquiry if we speak first of common characteristics, and then investigate the characteristics of special cases.

  We say that one thing comes to be from another thing, and one sort of thing from another sort of thing, both in the case of simple and of complex things. I mean the following. We can say (1) the ‘man becomes musical’, (35) (2) what is ‘not-musical becomes musical’, or (3) the ‘not-musical man becomes a musical man’. [190a] Now what becomes in (1) and (2)—‘man’ and ‘not musical’—I call simple, and what each becomes—‘musical’—simple also. But when (3) we say the ‘not-musical man becomes a musical man’, both what becomes and what it becomes are complex.

  As regards one of these simple ‘things that become’ we say not only ‘this becomes so-and-so’, (5) but also ‘from being this, comes to be so-and-so’, as ‘from being not-musical comes to be musical’; as regards the other we do not say this in all cases, as we do not say (1) ‘from being a man he came to be musical’ but only ‘the man became musical’.

  When a ‘simple’ thing is said to become something, in one case (1) it survives through the process, in the other (2) it does not. (10) For the man remains a man and is such even when he becomes musical, whereas what is not musical or is unmusical does not continue to exist, either simply or combined with the subject.

  These distinctions drawn, one can gather from surveying the various cases of becoming in the way we are describing that, as we say, there must always be an underlying something, namely that which becomes, (15) and that this, though always one numerically, in form at least is not one. (By that I mean that It can be described in different ways.) For ‘to be man’ is not the same as ‘to be unmusical’. One part survives, the other does not: what is not an opposite survives (for ‘man’ survives), but ‘not-musical’ or ‘unmusical’ does not survive, (20) nor does the compound of the two, namely ‘unmusical man’.

  We speak of ‘becoming that from this’ instead of ‘this becoming that’ more in the case of what does not survive the change—‘becoming musical from unmusical’, not ‘from man’—but there are exceptions, as we sometimes use the latter form of expression even of what survives; we speak of ‘a statue coming to be from bronze’, (25) not of the ‘bronze becoming a statue’. The change, however, from an opposite which does not survive is described indifferently in both ways, ‘becoming that from this’ or ‘this becoming that’. We say both that ‘the unmusical becomes musical’, and that ‘from unmusical he becomes musical’. (30) And so both forms are used of the complex, ‘becoming a musical man from an unmusical man’, and ‘an unmusical man becoming a musical man’.

  But there are different senses of ‘coming to be’. In some cases we do not use the expression ‘come to be’, but ‘come to be so-and-so’. Only substances are said to ‘come to be’ in the unqualified sense.

  Now in all cases other than substance it is plain that there must be some subject, namely, that which becomes. For we know that when a thing comes to be of such a quantity or quality or in such a relation, (35) time, or place, a subject is always presupposed, since substance alone is not predicated of another subject, but everything else of substance.

  But that substances too, and anything else that can be said ‘to be’ without qualification, come to be from some substratum, will appear on examination. [190b] For we find in every case something that underlies from which proceeds that which comes to be; for instance, animals and plants from seed.

  Generally things which come to be, come to be in different ways: (1) by change of shape, (5) as a statue; (2) by addition, as things which grow; (3) by taking away, as the Hermes from the stone; (4) by putting together, as a house; (5) by alteration, as things which ‘turn’ in respect of their material substance.

  It is plain that these are all cases of coming to be from a substratum.

  Thus, clearly, from what has been said, whatever comes to be is always complex. (10) There is, on the one hand, (a) something which comes into existence, and again (b) something which becomes that—the latter (b) in two senses, either the subject or the opposite. By the ‘opposite’ I mean the ‘unmusical’, by the ‘subject’ ‘man’, and similarly I call the absence of shape or form or order the ‘opposite’, (15) and the bronze or stone or gold the ‘subject’.

  Plainly then, if there are conditions and principles which constitute natural objects and from which they primarily are or have come to be—have come to be, I mean, what each is said to be in its essential nature, not what each is in respect of a concomitant attribute—plainly, (20) I say, everything comes to be from both subject and form. For ‘musical man’ is composed (in a way) of ‘man’ and ‘musical’: you can analyse it into the definitions of its elements. It is clear then that what comes to be will come to be from these elements.

  Now the subject is one numerically, though it is two in form. (For it is the man, the gold—the ‘matter’ generally—that is counted, (25) for it is more of the nature of a ‘this’, and what comes to be does not come from it in virtue of a concomitant attribute; the privation, on the other hand, and the contrary are incidental in the process.) And the positive form is one—the order, the acquired art of music, or any similar predicate.

  There is a sense, therefore, in which we must declare the principles to be two, and a sense in which they are three; a sense in which the contraries are the principles—say for example the musical and the unmusical, (30) the hot and the cold, the tuned and the untuned—and a sense in which they are not, since it is impossible for the contraries to be acted on by each other. But this difficulty also is solved by the fact that the substratum is different from the contraries, (35) for it is itself not a contrary. The principles therefore are, in a way, not more in number than the contraries, but as it were two, nor yet precisely two, since there is a difference of essential nature, but three. [191a] For ‘to be man’ is different from ‘to be unmusical’, and ‘to be unformed’ from ‘to be bronze’.

  We have now stated the number of the principles of natural objects which are subject to generation, and how the number is reached: and it is clear that there must be a substratum for the contraries, (5) and that the contraries must be two. (Yet in another way of putting it this is not necessary, as one of the contraries will serve to effect the change by its successive absence and presence.)

  The underlying nature is an object of scientific knowledge, by an analogy. For as the bronze is to the statue, the wood to the bed, (10) or the matter and the formless before receiving form to any thing which has form, so is the underlying nature to substance, i. e. the ‘this’ or existent.

  This then is one principle (though not one or existent in the same sense as the ‘this’), and the definition was one as we agreed; then further there is its contrary, the privation. In what sense these are two, (15) and in what sense more, has been stated above. Briefly, we explained first12 that only the contraries were principles, and later13 that a substratum was
indispensable, and that the principles were three; our last statement14 has elucidated the difference between the contraries, the mutual relation of the principles, and the nature of the substratum. Whether the form or the substratum is the essential nature of a physical object is not yet clear.15 But that the principles are three, (20) and in what sense, and the way in which each is a principle, is clear.

  So much then for the question of the number and the nature of the principles.

  8 We will now proceed to show that the difficulty of the early thinkers, as well as our own, is solved in this way alone.

  The first of those who studied science were misled in their search for truth and the nature of things by their inexperience, (25) which as it were thrust them into another path. So they say that none of the things that are either comes to be or passes out of existence, because what comes to be must do so either from what is or from what is not, both of which are impossible. For what is cannot come to be (because it is already), (30) and from what is not nothing could have come to be (because something must be present as a substratum). So too they exaggerated the consequence of this, and went so far as to deny even the existence of a plurality of things, maintaining that only Being itself is. Such then was their opinion, and such the reason for its adoption.