The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (83 page)

‘Quantum-in-general’ does not come-to-be any more than ‘animal’ which is neither man nor any other of the specific forms of animal: what ‘animal-in-general’ is in coming-to-be, that ‘quantum-in-general’ is in growth. But what does come-to-be in growth is flesh or bone—or a hand or arm (i. e. the tissues of these organic parts).
⁶³
Such things come-to-be, then, by the accession not of quantified-flesh but of a quantified-something.
(20)
In so far as this acceding food is potentially the double result—e. g. is potentially so-much-flesh—it produces growth: for it is bound to become actually both
so-much
and
flesh.
But in so far as it is potentially flesh only, it nourishes: for it is thus that ‘nutrition’ and ‘growth’ differ by their definition. That is why a body’s ‘nutrition’ continues so long as it is kept alive (even when it is diminishing), though not its ‘growth’; and why nutrition, though ‘the same’ as growth, is yet different from it in its actual being.
(25)
For in so far as that which accedes is potentially ‘so-much-flesh’ it tends to increase flesh: whereas, in so far as it is potentially ‘flesh’ only, it is nourishment.

The form of which we have spoken
⁶⁴
is a kind of power immersed in matter—a duct, as it were. If, then, a matter accedes—a matter, which is potentially a duct and also potentially possesses determinate quantity—the ducts to which it accedes will become bigger.
(30)
But if it
⁶⁵
is no longer able to act—if it has been weakened by the continued influx of matter, just as water, continually mixed in greater and greater quantity with wine, in the end makes the wine watery and
converts it into water—then it will cause a diminution of the
quantum;
⁶⁶
though still the form persists.

6
     
[322b]
we must first investigate the
matter,
i. e. the so-called ‘elements’. We must ask whether they really are elements or not, i. e. whether each of them is eternal or whether there is a sense in which they come-to-be: and, if they do come-to-be, whether all of them come-to-be in the same manner, reciprocally out of one another, or whether one amongst them is something primary.
(5)
Hence we must begin by explaining certain preliminary matters, about which the statements now current are vague.

For all —those who generate the ‘elements’ as well as those who generate the bodies that are compounded of the elements—make use of ‘dissociation’ and ‘association’, and of ‘action’ and ‘passion’. Now ‘association’ is ‘combination’; but the precise meaning of the process we call ‘combining’ has not been explained. Again, without an agent and a patient there cannot be ‘altering’ any more than there can be ‘dissociating’ and ‘associating’.
(10)
For not only those who postulate a plurality of elements employ their reciprocal action and passion to generate the compounds: those who derive things from a single element are equally compelled to introduce ‘acting’. And in this respect Diogenes is right when he argues that ‘unless all things were derived from one,
(15)
reciprocal action and passion could not have occurred’. The hot thing, e. g., would not be cooled and the cold thing in turn be warmed: for heat and cold do not change reciprocally into one another, but what changes (it is clear) is the
substratum.
Hence, whenever there is action and passion between two things, that which underlies them must be a single something. No doubt,
(20)
it is not true to say that
all
things are of this character:
⁶⁷
but it is true of all things between which there is reciprocal action and passion.

But if we must investigate ‘action-passion’ and ‘combination’, we must also investigate ‘contact’. For action and passion (in the proper sense of the terms) can only occur between things which are such as to touch one another; nor can things enter into combination at all unless they have come into a certain kind of contact.
(25)
Hence we must give a definite account of these three things—of ‘contact’, ‘combination’, and ‘acting’.

Let us start as follows. All things which admit of ‘combination’
must be capable of reciprocal contact: and the same is true of any two things, of which one ‘acts’ and the other ‘suffers action’ in the proper sense of the terms. For this reason we must treat of ‘contact’ first.

Now every term which possesses a variety of meanings includes those various meanings
either
owing to a mere coincidence of language,
(30)
or
owing to a real order of derivation in the different things to which it is applied: but, though this may be taken to hold of ‘contact’ as of all such terms, it is nevertheless true that ‘contact’
in the proper sense
applies only to things which have ‘position’. And ‘position’ belongs only to those things which also have a ‘place’: for in so far as we attribute ‘contact’ to the mathematical things, we must also attribute ‘place’ to them, whether they exist in separation or in some other fashion.
[323a]
Assuming, therefore, that ‘to touch’ is—as we have defined it in a previous work
⁶⁸
—‘to have the extremes together’, only those things will touch one another which, being separate magnitudes and possessing position,
(5)
have their extremes ‘together’. And since position belongs only to those things which also have a ‘place’, while the primary differentiation of ‘place’ is ‘the above’ and ‘the below’ (and the similar pairs of opposites), all things which touch one another will have ‘weight’ or ‘lightness’—
either
both these qualities
or
one or the other of them.
⁶⁹
But bodies which are heavy or light are such as to ‘act’ and ‘suffer action’. Hence it is clear that those things are by nature such as to touch one another,
(10)
which (being separate magnitudes) have their extremes ‘together’ and are able to move, and be moved by, one another.

The manner in which the ‘mover’ moves the ‘moved’ is not always the same: on the contrary, whereas one kind of ‘mover’ can only impart motion by being itself moved, another kind can do so though remaining itself unmoved. Clearly therefore we must recognize a corresponding variety in speaking of the ‘acting’ thing too: for the ‘mover’ is said to ‘act’ (in a sense) and the ‘acting’ thing to ‘impart motion’.
(15)
Nevertheless there is a difference and we must draw a distinction. For not every ‘mover’ can ‘act’, if (
a
) the term ‘agent’ is to be used in contrast to ‘patient’ and (
b
) ‘patient’ is to be applied only to those things whose motion is a ‘qualitative affection’—i. e. a quality, like ‘white’ or ‘hot’, in respect to which they are ‘moved’ only in the sense that they are ‘altered’: on the contrary,
(20)
to ‘impart motion’ is a wider term than to ‘act’. Still, so much, at any rate,
is clear: the things which are ‘such as to impart motion’, if that description be interpreted in one sense, will touch the things which are ‘such as to be moved by them’—while they will not touch them, if the description be interpreted in a different sense. But the disjunctive definition of ‘touching’ must include and distinguish (
a
) ‘contact in general’ as the relation between two things which, having position, are such that one is able to impart motion and the other to be moved, and (
b
) ‘reciprocal contact’ as the relation between two things, one able to impart motion and the other able to be moved in such a way that ‘action and passion’ are predictable of them.
(25)

As a rule, no doubt, if A touches B, B touches A. For indeed practically all the ‘movers’ within our ordinary experience impart motion by being moved: in their case, what touches inevitably must, and also evidently does, touch something which reciprocally touches it. Yet, if A moves B, it is possible—as we sometimes express it—for A ‘merely to touch’ B, and that which touches need not touch a something which touches it.
(30)
Nevertheless it is commonly supposed that ‘touching’ must be reciprocal. The reason of this belief is that ‘movers’ which belong to the same kind as the ‘moved’ impart motion by being moved. Hence if anything imparts motion without itself being moved, it may touch the ‘moved’ and yet itself be touched by nothing—for we say sometimes that the man who grieves us ‘touches’ us, but not that we ‘touch’ him.

The account just given may serve to distinguish and define the ‘contact’ which occurs in the things of Nature.
[323b]
Next in order we must discuss ‘action’ and ‘passion’.

7
     The traditional theories on the subject are conflicting. For (i) most thinkers are unanimous in maintaining (
a
) that ‘like’ is always unaffected by ‘like’,
(5)
because (as they argue) neither of two ‘likes’ is more apt than the other either to act or to suffer action, since all the properties which belong to the one belong identically and in the same degree to the other; and (
b
) that ‘unlikes’, i. e. ‘differents’, are by nature such as to act and suffer action reciprocally. For even when the smaller fire is destroyed by the greater, it suffers this effect (they say) owing to its ‘contrariety’—since the great is contrary to the small.
(10)
But (ii) Democritus dissented from all the other thinkers and maintained a theory peculiar to himself. He asserts that agent and patient are identical, i. e. ‘like’. It is not possible (he says) that ‘others’, i. e. ‘differents’, should suffer action from one another: on the contrary,
(15)
even if two things, being ‘others’, do act in some way on one another,
this happens to them not
qua
‘others’ but
qua
possessing an identical property.

Such, then, are the traditional theories, and it looks as if the statements of their advocates were in manifest conflict. But the reason of this conflict is that each group is in fact stating
a part
, whereas they ought to have taken a comprehensive view of the subject
as a whole.
For (i) if A and B are ‘like’—absolutely and in all respects without difference from one another—it is reasonable to infer that neither is in any way affected by the other.
(20)
Why, indeed, should either of them tend to act any more than the other? Moreover, if ‘like’ can be affected by ‘like’, a thing can also be affected by itself: and yet if that were so—if ‘like’ tended in fact to act
qua
‘like’—there would be nothing indestructible or immovable, for everything would move itself. And (ii) the same consequence follows if A and B are absolutely ‘other’, i. e. in no respect identical.
Whiteness
could not be affected in any way by
line
nor
linẹ
by
whiteness
—except perhaps ‘coincidentally’,
(25)
viz. if the line happened to be white or black: for unless two things either are, or are composed of, ‘contraries’, neither drives the other out of its natural condition.
(30)
But (iii) since only those things which either involve a ‘contrariety’ or are ‘contraries’—and not any things selected at random—are such as to suffer action and to act, agent and patient must be ‘like’ (i. e. identical) in kind and yet ‘unlike’ (i. e. contrary) in species. (For it is a law of nature that body is affected by body, flavour by flavour, colour by colour, and so in general what belongs to any kind by a member of the same kind—the reason being that ‘contraries’ are in every case within a single identical kind, and it is ‘contraries’ which reciprocally act and suffer action.)
[324a]
Hence agent and patient must be in one sense identical,
(5)
but in another sense other than (i. e. ‘unlike’) one another. And since (
a
) patient and agent are generically identical (i. e. ‘like’) but specifically ‘unlike’, while (
b
) it is ‘contraries’ that exhibit this character: it is clear that ‘contraries’ and their ‘intermediates’ are such as to suffer action and to act reciprocally—for indeed it is these that constitute the entire sphere of passing-away and coming-to-be.

We can now understand why fire heats and the cold thing cools,
(10)
and in general why the active thing assimilates to itself the patient. For agent and patient are contrary to one another, and coming-to-be is a process into the contrary: hence the patient
must
change into the agent, since it is only thus that coming-to-be will be a process into the contrary. And, again, it is intelligible that the advocates of both views, although their theories are not the same, are yet in contact
with the nature of the facts.
(15)
For sometimes we speak of the
substratum
as suffering action (e. g. of ‘the man’ as being healed, being warmed and chilled, and similarly in all the other cases), but at other times we say ‘what is cold is being warmed’, ‘what is sick is being healed’: and in both these ways of speaking we express the truth, since in one sense it is the ‘matter’, while in another sense it is the ‘contrary’, which suffers action. (We make the same distinction in speaking of the agent: for sometimes we say that ‘the man’,
(20)
but at other times that ‘what is hot’, produces heat.) Now the one group of thinkers supposed that agent and patient must possess something identical, because they fastened their attention on the
substratum
: while the other group maintained the opposite because their attention was concentrated on the ‘contraries.’

We must conceive the same account to hold of action and passion as that which is true of ‘being moved’ and ‘imparting motion’.
(25)
For the ‘mover’, like the ‘agent’, has two meanings. Both (
a
) that which contains the originative source of the motion is thought to ‘impart motion’ (for the originative source is first amongst the causes), and also (
b
) that which is last, i. e. immediately next to the moved thing and to the coming-to-be. A similar distinction holds also of the agent: for we speak not only (
a
) of the doctor,
(30)
but also (
b
) of the wine, as healing. Now, in motion, there is nothing to prevent
the first mover
being unmoved (indeed, as regards some ‘first movers’ this is actually necessary) although
the last mover
always imparts motion by being itself moved: and, in action, there is nothing to prevent
the first agent
being unaffected, while
the last agent
only acts by suffering action itself. For (
a
) if agent and patient have not the same matter,
(35)
agent acts without being affected: thus the art of healing produces health without itself being acted upon in any way by that which is being healed.
[324b]
But (
b
) the food, in acting, is itself in some way acted upon: for, in acting, it is simultaneously heated or cooled or otherwise affected. Now the art of healing corresponds to an ‘originative source’, while the food corresponds to ‘the last’ (i. e. ‘contiguous’) mover.
(5)

Those active powers, then, whose forms are not embodied in matter, are unaffected: but those whose forms are in matter are such as to be affected in acting. For we maintain that one and the same ‘matter’ is
equally
, so to say, the basis of either of the two opposed things—being as it were a ‘kind’;
⁷⁰
and that
that which can be hot
must be made hot, provided the heating agent is there, i. e. comes near.
(10)
Hence (as we have said) some of the active powers are unaffected while others are such as to be affected; and what holds of
motion is true also of the active powers. For as in motion ‘the first mover’ is moved, so among the active powers ‘the first agent’ is unaffected.

The active power is a ‘cause’ in the sense of that from which the process originates: but the end, for the sake of which it takes place,
(15)
is not ‘active’. (That is why
health
is not ‘active’, except metaphorically.) For when the agent is there, the patient
becomes
something: but when ‘states’
⁷¹
are there, the patient no longer
becomes
but already
is
—and ‘forms’ (i. e. ‘ends’) are a kind of ‘state’. As to the matter’, it (
qua
matter) is passive. Now fire contains ‘the hot’ embodied in matter: but a ‘hot’ separate from matter (if such a thing existed) could not suffer any action.
(20)
Perhaps, indeed, it is impossible that ‘the hot’ should exist in separation from matter: but if there are any entities thus separable, what we are saying would be true of them.

We have thus explained what action and passion are, what things exhibit them, why they do so, and in what manner.