The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

  Our explanation on the other hand is that the phrases ‘something comes to be from what is or from what is not’, ‘what is not or what is does something or has something done to it or becomes some particular thing’, (35) are to be taken (in the first way of putting our explanation) in the same sense as ‘a doctor does something or has something done to him’, ‘is or becomes something from being a doctor’. [191b] These expressions may be taken in two senses, and so too, clearly, may ‘from being’, and ‘being acts or is acted on’. A doctor builds a house, not qua doctor, but qua housebuilder, and turns gray, (5) not qua doctor, but qua dark-haired. On the other hand he doctors or fails to doctor qua doctor. But we are using words most appropriately when we say that a doctor does something or undergoes something, or becomes something from being a doctor, if he does, undergoes, or becomes qua doctor. Clearly then also ‘to come to be so-and-so from not-being’ means ‘qua not-being’.

  It was through failure to make this distinction that those thinkers gave the matter up, (10) and through this error that they went so much farther astray as to suppose that nothing else comes to be or exists apart from Being itself, thus doing away with all becoming.

  We ourselves are in agreement with them in holding that nothing can be said without qualification to come from what is not. But nevertheless we maintain that a thing may ‘come to be from what is not’—that is, (15) in a qualified sense. For a thing comes to be from the privation, which in its own nature is not-being—this not surviving as a constituent of the result. Yet this causes surprise, and it is thought impossible that something should come to be in the way described from what is not.

  In the same way we maintain that nothing comes to be from being, and that being does not come to be except in a qualified sense. In that way, however, it does, just as animal might come to be from animal, (20) and an animal of a certain kind from an animal of a certain kind. Thus, suppose a dog to come to be from a horse. The dog would then, it is true, come to be from animal (as well as from an animal of a certain kind) but not as animal, for that is already there. But if anything is to become an animal, not in a qualified sense, (25) it will not be from animal: and if being, not from being—nor from not-being either, for it has been explained16 that by ‘from not-being’ we mean from not-being qua not-being.

  Note further that we do not subvert the principle that everything either is or is not.

  This then is one way of solving the difficulty. Another consists in pointing out that the same things can be explained in terms of potentiality and actuality. But this has been done with greater precision elsewhere.17

  So as we said, (30) the difficulties which constrain people to deny the existence of some of the things we mentioned are now solved. For it was this reason which also caused some of the earlier thinkers to turn so far aside from the road which leads to coming to be and passing away and change generally. If they had come in sight of this nature, all their ignorance would have been dispelled.

  9 Others,18 (35) indeed, have apprehended the nature in question, but not adequately.

  In the first place they allow that a thing may come to be without qualification from not-being, accepting on this point the statement19 of Parmenides. [192a] Secondly, they think that if the substratum is one numerically, it must have also only a single potentiality—which is a very different thing.

  Now we distinguish matter and privation, and hold that one of these, namely the matter, is not-being only in virtue of an attribute which it has, while the privation in its own nature is not-being; and that the matter is nearly, in a sense is, substance, (5) while the privation in no sense is. They, on the other hand, identify their Great and Small alike with not-being, and that whether they are taken together as one or separately. Their triad is therefore of quite a different kind from ours. For they got so far as to see that there must be some underlying nature, (10) but they make it one—for even if one philosopher20 makes a dyad of it, which he calls Great and Small, the effect is the same, for he overlooked the other nature.21 For the one which persists is a joint cause, with the form, of what comes to be—a mother, as it were.22 But the negative part of the contrariety may often seem, (15) if you concentrate your attention on it as an evil agent, not to exist at all.

  For admitting with them that there is something divine, good, and desirable, we hold that there are two other principles, the one contrary to it, the other such as of its own nature to desire and yearn for it. But the consequence of their view is that the contrary desires its own extinction. Yet the form cannot desire itself, for it is not defective; nor can the contrary desire it, (20) for contraries are mutually destructive. The truth is that what desires the form is matter, as the female desires the male and the ugly the beautiful—only the ugly or the female not per se but per accidens.

  The matter comes to be and ceases to be in one sense, (25) while in another it does not. As that which contains the privation, it ceases to be in its own nature, for what ceases to be—the privation—is contained within it. But as potentiality it does not cease to be in its own nature, but is necessarily outside the sphere of becoming and ceasing to be. For if it came to be, something must have existed as a primary substratum from which it should come and which should persist in it; but this is its own special nature, so that it will be before coming to be. (30) (For my definition of matter is just this—the primary substratum of each thing, from which it comes to be without qualification, and which persists in the result.) And if it ceases to be it will pass into that at the last, so it will have ceased to be before ceasing to be.

  The accurate determination of the first principle in respect of form, whether it is one or many and what it is or what they are, (35) is the province of the primary type of science;23 so these questions may stand over till then.24 [192b] But of the natural, i. e. perishable, forms we shall speak in the expositions which follow.

  The above, then, may be taken as sufficient to establish that there are principles and what they are and how many there are. Now let us make a fresh start and proceed.

  * * *

  1 The present treatise, usually called the Physics, deals with natural body in general: the special kinds are discussed in Aristotle’s other physical works, the De Caelo, &c. The first book is concerned with the elements of a natural body (matter and form): the second mainly with the different types of cause studied by the physicist. Books III–VII deal with movement, and the notions implied in it. The subject of VIII is the prime mover, which, though not itself a natural body, is the cause of movement in natural bodies.

  2 The former method was suggested by Hippocrates of Chios, and rested on the rather obvious geometrical fallacy of supposing that if a particular kind of lunule can be squared, another kind can be squared also. Antiphon’s method was that of exhaustion. He drew a square in the circle, and then isosceles triangles on its sides, and so on, and inferred that ultimately the inscribed polygon was equal in area to the circle. This involves a denial of the geometrical principle that every geometrical magnitude can be divided ad infinitum, and gives only an approximate result.

  3 e. g. a point which terminates a line is indivisible, though the line is not.

  4 An orator and a pupil of Gorgias.

  5 Water, air, or fire. Aristotle points out elsewhere (Met. A. 988b 30) that no one made earth the substratum.

  6 a19–30.

  7 The table is given in Met. A. 986a 23.

  8 That the contraries are principles (ch. 5).

  9 That the contraries need a substratum (ll. 21–34).

  10 187a 16.

  11 a21.

  12 Ch. 5.

  13 Ch. 6.

  14 Ch. 7.

  15 This is discussed below, Bk. II, Ch. 1.

  16 l. 9.

  17 Met. Bk. ix, and v. 1017a 35−b 9.

  18 The Platonists.

  19 That if a thing does not come to be from being, it must come to be from not-being.

  20 Plato.

  21 The privation.

&
nbsp; 22 Cf. Tim. 50 D, 51. A.

  23 Metaphysics or ‘First philosophy’ as it is often called.

  24 Met. xii 7–9.

  BOOK II

  1 Of things that exist, some exist by nature, some from other causes. ‘By nature’ the animals and their parts exist, (10) and the plants and the simple bodies (earth, fire, air, water)—for we say that these and the like exist ‘by nature’.

  All the things mentioned present a feature in which they differ from things which are not constituted by nature. Each of them has within itself a principle of motion and of stationariness (in respect of place, (15) or of growth and decrease, or by way of alteration). On the other hand, a bed and a coat and anything else of that sort, qua receiving these designations—i. e. in so far as they are products of art—have no innate impulse to change. But in so far as they happen to be composed of stone or of earth or of a mixture of the two, (20) they do have such an impulse, and just to that extent—which seems to indicate that nature is a source or cause of being moved and of being at rest in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not in virtue of a concomitant attribute.

  I say ‘not in virtue of a concomitant attribute’, because (for instance) a man who is a doctor might cure himself. (25) Nevertheless it is not in so far as he is a patient that he possesses the art of medicine: it merely has happened that the same man is doctor and patient—and that is why these attributes are not always found together. So it is with all other artificial products. None of them has in itself the source of its own production. But while in some cases (for instance houses and the other products of manual labour) that principle is in something else external to the thing, (30) in others—those which may cause a change in themselves in virtue of a concomitant attribute—it lies in the things themselves (but not in virtue of what they are).

  ‘Nature’ then is what has been stated. Things ‘have a nature’ which have a principle of this kind. Each of them is a substance; for it is a subject, and nature always implies a subject in which it inheres.

  The term ‘according to nature’ is applied to all these things and also to the attributes which belong to them in virtue of what they are, (35) for instance the property of fire to be carried upwards—which is not a ‘nature’ nor ‘has a nature’ but is ‘by nature’ or ‘according to nature’.

  What nature is, then, and the meaning of the terms ‘by nature’ and ‘according to nature’, has been stated. [193a] That nature exists, it would be absurd to try to prove; for it is obvious that there are many things of this kind, and to prove what is obvious by what is not is the mark of a man who is unable to distinguish what is self-evident from what is not. (5) (This state of mind is clearly possible. A man blind from birth might reason about colours. Presumably therefore such persons must be talking about words without any thought to correspond.)

  Some identify the nature or substance of a natural object with that immediate constituent of it which taken by itself is without arrangement, (10) e. g. the wood is the ‘nature’ of the bed, and the bronze the ‘nature’ of the statue.

  As an indication of this Antiphon points out that if you planted a bed and the rotting wood acquired the power of sending up a shoot, it would not be a bed that would come up, but wood—which shows that the arrangement in accordance with the rules of the art is merely an incidental attribute, (15) whereas the real nature is the other, which, further, persists continuously through the process of making.

  But if the material of each of these objects has itself the same relation to something else, say bronze (or gold) to water, bones (or wood) to earth and so on, that (they say) would be their nature and essence. (20) Consequently some assert earth, others fire or air or water or some or all of these, to be the nature of the things that are. For whatever any one of them supposed to have this character—whether one thing or more than one thing—this or these he declared to be the whole of substance, (25) all else being its affections, states, or dispositions. Every such thing they held to be eternal (for it could not pass into anything else), but other things to come into being and cease to be times without number.

  This then is one account of ‘nature’, namely that it is the immediate material substratum of things which have in themselves a principle of motion or change.

  Another account is that ‘nature’ is the shape or form which is specified in the definition of the thing. (30)

  For the word ‘nature’ is applied to what is according to nature and the natural in the same way as ‘art’ is applied to what is artistic or a work of art. We should not say in the latter case that there is anything artistic about a thing, if it is a bed only potentially, not yet having the form of a bed; nor should we call it a work of art. (35) The same is true of natural compounds. What is potentially flesh or bone has not yet its own ‘nature’, and does not exist ‘by nature’, until it receives the form specified in the definition, which we name in defining what flesh or bone is. [193b] Thus in the second sense of ‘nature’ it would be the shape or form (not separable except in statement) of things which have in themselves a source of motion. (5) (The combination of the two, e. g. man, is not ‘nature’ but ‘by nature’ or ‘natural’.)

  The form indeed is ‘nature’ rather than the matter; for a thing is more properly said to be what it is when it has attained to fulfilment than when it exists potentially. Again man is born from man, but not bed from bed. That is why people say that the figure is not the nature of a bed, (10) but the wood is—if the bed sprouted not a bed but wood would come up. But even if the figure is art, then on the same principle the shape of man is his nature. For man is born from man.

  We also speak of a thing’s nature as being exhibited in the process of growth by which its nature is attained. The ‘nature’ in this sense is not like ‘doctoring’, (15) which leads not to the art of doctoring but to health. Doctoring must start from the art, not lead to it. But it is not in this way that nature (in the one sense) is related to nature (in the other). What grows qua growing grows from something into something. Into what then does it grow? Not into that from which it arose but into that to which it tends. The shape then is nature.

  ‘Shape’ and ‘nature’, it should be added, are used in two senses. (20) For the privation too is in a way form. But whether in unqualified coming to be there is privation, i. e. a contrary to what comes to be, we must consider later.1

  2 We have distinguished, then, the different ways in which the term ‘nature’ is used.

  The next point to consider is how the mathematician differs from the physicist. Obviously physical bodies contain surfaces and volumes, lines and points, and these are the subject-matter of mathematics.

  Further, (25) is astronomy different from physics or a department of it? It seems absurd that the physicist should be supposed to know the nature of sun or moon, but not to know any of their essential attributes, particularly as the writers on physics obviously do discuss their shape also and whether the earth and the world are spherical or not. (30)

  Now the mathematician, though he too treats of these things, nevertheless does not treat of them as the limits of a physical body; nor does he consider the attributes indicated as the attributes of such bodies. That is why he separates them; for in thought they are separable from motion, and it makes no difference, nor does any falsity result, if they are separated. The holders of the theory of Forms do the same, (35) though they are not aware of it; for they separate the objects of physics, which are less separable than those of mathematics. This becomes plain if one tries to state in each of the two cases the definitions of the things and of their attributes. [194a] ‘Odd’ and ‘even’, ‘straight’ and ‘curved’, and likewise ‘number’, ‘line’, and ‘figure’, do not involve motion; not so ‘flesh’ and ‘bone’ and ‘man’—these are defined like ‘snub nose’, (5) not like ‘curved’.

  Similar evidence is supplied by the more physical of the branches of mathematics, such as optics, harmonics, and astronomy. These are in a way the
converse of geometry. While geometry investigates physical lines but not qua physical, optics investigates mathematical lines, (10) but qua physical, not qua mathematical.

  Since ‘nature’ has two senses, the form and the matter, we must investigate its objects as we would the essence of snubness. That is, such things are neither independent of matter nor can be defined in terms of matter only. Here too indeed one might raise a difficulty. (15) Since there are two natures, with which is the physicist concerned? Or should he investigate the combination of the two? But if the combination of the two, then also each severally. Does it belong then to the same or to different sciences to know each severally?

  If we look at the ancients, physics would seem to be concerned with the matter. (It was only very slightly that Empedocles and Democritus touched on the forms and the essence. (20))

  But if on the other hand art imitates nature, and it is the part of the same discipline to know the form and the matter up to a point (e. g. the doctor has a knowledge of health and also of bile and phlegm, in which health is realized, and the builder both of the form of the house and of the matter, namely that it is bricks and beams, (25) and so forth): if this is so, it would be the part of physics also to know nature in both its senses.

  Again, ‘that for the sake of which’, or the end, belongs to the same department of knowledge as the means. But the nature is the end or ‘that for the sake of which’. For if a thing undergoes a continuous change and there is a stage which is last, this stage is the end or ‘that for the sake of which’. (That is why the poet was carried away into making an absurd statement when he said ‘he has the end2 for the sake of which he was born’. (30) For not every stage that is last claims to be an end, but only that which is best.)

  For the arts make their material (some simply ‘make’ it, others make it serviceable), and we use everything as if it was there for our sake. (35) (We also are in a sense an end. ‘That for the sake of which’ has two senses: the distinction is made in our work On Philosophy.3) The arts, therefore, which govern the matter and have knowledge are two, namely the art which uses the product and the art which directs the production of it. [194b] That is why the using art also is in a sense directive; but it differs in that it knows the form, whereas the art which is directive as being concerned with production knows the matter. (5) For the helmsman knows and prescribes what sort of form a helm should have, the other from what wood it should be made and by means of what operations. In the products of art, however, we make the material with a view to the function, whereas in the products of nature the matter is there all along.