Aristotle · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| That is why they all burn and contain earth; for they contain a dry exhalation. Gold alone does not burn. We have now spoken about all of them in common; but we must examine each kind individually, taking them up one by one. Book 4. Since four causes of the elements have been distinguished, and in accordance with their pairings the elements too turn out to be four — two of them active, the hot and the cold, and two passive, the dry and the wet — the proof of this comes from induction. For it is apparent in all cases that heat and cold bound, combine, and change things of the same kind and things not of the same kind, and make them wet and dry and hard and soft, while the dry and the wet are bounded and undergo the other affections mentioned, both in their own right and in all the bodies composed in common out of both. It is also clear from the accounts by which we define their natures: for we call the hot and the cold active (since what has the power to combine things is in a way something active), while we call the wet and the dry passive (for being easily bounded and being hard to bound are said to belong to their nature through their being acted on in some way). That the one pair is active and the other passive, then, is evident. Now that these have been distinguished, we should take up the workings by which the active elements produce their effects, and the forms of the passive ones. First, then, in general: simple generation and natural change is a work of these powers, and so, oppositely, is destruction in accordance with nature.
2| These, then, belong to plants and animals and their parts. Simple and natural generation is change brought about by these powers, whenever they attain a due proportion out of the matter underlying each nature; and these are the passive powers mentioned. The hot and the cold generate when they master the matter; but when they do not master it, imperfect boiling and lack of concoction occur locally. The thing most generally opposed to simple generation is putrefaction; for every destruction that occurs in accordance with nature is a road toward this, as old age and withering are. The end of everything else is rottenness, unless something composed by nature is destroyed by force; for it is possible to burn up flesh and bone and anything else, but for things whose destruction proceeds according to nature, the end is putrefaction. That is why things that putrefy become wet first and dry at the end; for they came into being out of these, and the dry was bounded by the wet through the working of the active elements. Destruction occurs when what is bounded overpowers what bounds it, on account of what surrounds it. However, putrefaction is spoken of in the strict sense only for things destroyed part by part, when they are separated from their nature. That is why everything else putrefies except fire;
3| for even earth and water and air putrefy, since all of these are matter for fire. Putrefaction is the destruction of the heat proper and natural to each moist thing by an alien heat; and this alien heat belongs to what surrounds it. So then, since the thing suffers through a deficiency of heat, and whatever lacks such a power is entirely cold, both would be causes, and the common affection, putrefaction, is due to both a coldness that is proper and a heat that is alien. This is also why everything that putrefies becomes drier, and ends as earth and dung; for as the proper heat departs it evaporates the natural moisture along with it, and there is no longer anything to draw the moisture in, since it is the proper heat, by its drawing, that brings the moisture in. Things also putrefy less in cold weather than in warm; for in winter there is little heat in the surrounding air and water, so that it has no strength, while in summer there is more. And neither what is frozen putrefies (for it is colder than the air is hot, so it is not overpowered — what moves overpowers) nor what is boiling or hot (for the heat in the air is less than the heat in the thing, so that it does not overpower it and produces no change at all).
4| Likewise, too, what is moving and flowing putrefies less than what is motionless; for the motion produced by the heat in the air becomes weaker than the motion already present in the thing, so that it produces no change. The same cause also explains why a large quantity putrefies less than a small one; for in the greater quantity there is more proper fire and cold than is enough for the powers in what surrounds it to overpower. That is why the sea, when divided up into parts, quickly putrefies, but the whole does not, and other bodies of water are the same way. And animals come to be in things that putrefy, because the heat that has been separated off, being natural, brings together the things that have been separated out. What generation and destruction are, then, has been stated.
5| It remains to speak of the further forms — as many as the powers we have mentioned produce out of the things already composed by nature, taking these as their underlying material. Now heat has concoction, and concoction has ripening, boiling, and further, roasting; cold has lack of concoction, and this has rawness, imperfect boiling, and imperfect roasting. We must understand that these names are not applied to the things in a strict sense — the term is not laid down universally for like cases — so that we must think of the forms mentioned not as being exactly these, but as being of this sort. Let us say what each of them is. Concoction, then, is a perfecting by the natural and proper heat, out of the opposed passive qualities; and these are the matter proper to each thing. For when a thing has been concocted, it has been perfected and has come to be. And the origin of this perfecting comes about through the proper heat, even if it is brought to completion with the help of something external, as when food is concocted with the help of baths and other such things; but the origin, at any rate, is the heat within the thing itself. For some things the end is their nature — nature in the sense we mean when we speak of form and substance; for others, the end of concoction is a certain underlying shape, whenever the moisture becomes of such a quality and such a quantity, whether by being roasted or boiled or putrefied or heated in some other way;
6| for then it is useful, and we say it has been concocted, as with must, and the matter that forms in tumors when it turns to pus, and a tear when it turns to rheum. And likewise with the rest. This happens to all of them whenever the matter and the moisture are overpowered; for this moisture is what is bounded by the heat present in the nature. For as long as the ratio is present within it, this is nature. That is why such things are signs of health — urine and excretions and residues generally. And a thing is said to have been concocted because this shows that the proper heat is overpowering what is indeterminate. Things that are concocted must necessarily be thicker and hotter; for that is what heat produces — something more solid, thicker, and drier. Concoction, then, is this; lack of concoction is incompleteness through a deficiency of the proper heat; and the deficiency of heat is coldness; and the incompleteness belongs to the opposed passive qualities, which is the matter proper to each nature. Let concoction and lack of concoction, then, be distinguished in this way.
7| Ripening is a kind of concoction; for the concoction of the nourishment in fruit-coverings is called ripening. Since concoction is a kind of perfecting, ripening is complete whenever the seeds in the fruit-covering are able to produce another thing such as itself; for in other cases too, this is how we speak of what is complete. This, then, is the ripening of a fruit-covering; but many other concocted things are also called ripe, in the same general sense but by a transfer of the word, because, as has been said before, names are not laid down for each kind of perfecting occurring in the things bounded by natural heat and cold. The ripening of tumors and phlegm and things of that sort is the concoction, by the natural heat present, of the moisture contained in them; for it is impossible to bound something without overpowering it. So then, out of the vaporous elements watery things are formed, and out of these, earthy things, and everything that ripens always becomes thicker out of what was thin. And nature draws some things into itself in this process, and expels others. What ripening is, then, has been stated; rawness is its opposite; and opposed to ripening is the lack of concoction of the nourishment in the fruit-covering; and this is the indeterminate moisture.
8| Rawness, therefore, is either windy or watery, or made up of both. Since ripening is a kind of completion, rawness will be an incompleteness. Incompleteness comes about through a deficiency of natural heat and a disproportion relative to the moisture being ripened. No moist thing ripens by itself, in its own right, without the dry; for water alone among moist things does not thicken. This comes about either because the heat is small or because the matter to be bounded is great; which is why the juices of raw things are thin, and cold rather than hot, and unfit to eat and unfit to drink. Rawness, like ripening, is spoken of in many ways. Hence urine, stools, and catarrhs too are called raw for the same reason: for everything that has not been mastered by heat nor brought to consistency is called raw. Carrying the usage further, unfired pottery is called raw, and milk is called raw, and many other things, whenever things capable of changing and being brought to consistency by heat remain unaffected by it. That is why water is called boiled but not called raw, because it does not thicken. So it has been said what ripening and rawness are, and why each of them occurs. Boiling, taken as a whole, is a concoction by moist heat of the indeterminate matter present in the moisture, but the name is properly applied only to things that are boiled.
9| This indeterminate matter would be, as has been said, windy or watery. Concoction comes about from the fire that is in the moisture; for what is cooked on frying-pans is roasted: it is affected by the heat from outside, and the moisture in which it lies is made drier by it, since it draws that moisture up into itself. But what is boiled does the opposite: its moisture is drawn out of it by the heat in the surrounding liquid. This is why boiled things are drier than roasted things: things being boiled do not draw the moisture up into themselves, for the heat outside masters the heat inside; whereas if the internal heat mastered the outside heat, it would draw the moisture into itself. Not every body is capable of being boiled: not a body in which there is no moisture at all, as in stones, nor one in which moisture is present but cannot be mastered because of density, as in wood; but only those bodies that have a moisture capable of being affected by the fire in the liquid. Gold too is said to be boiled, and wood, and many other things, though not in the same sense — by metaphor; for no names have been established for these differences. And we also say that liquids are boiled, for example milk and new wine, when the juice in the liquid changes into some form under the heating of fire applied round about and from outside, so that in a certain way it produces something close to the boiling just described.
10| The end is not the same for all things, whether boiled or concocted, but for some it is eating, for others sipping, for others some other use, since we also speak of boiling drugs. So all things that can become thicker, or smaller, or heavier, or partly one of these and partly the opposite, because when they are separated out part thickens and part becomes thin — as milk separates into whey and curds — all such things can be boiled. But oil is not boiled by itself, because it undergoes none of these changes. This, then, is what the concoction called boiling is; and it makes no difference whether it occurs in the instruments of craft or of nature, if it occurs, for in every case it will be for the same cause. Parboiling is a lack of concoction opposite to boiling; and this would be the opposite in the sense first mentioned — a lack of concoction of the indeterminate matter in the body, arising through a deficiency of the heat in the surrounding moisture. It has been said that this deficiency goes along with coldness; it arises through a different motion, for the concocting heat is knocked out, and the deficiency comes about either through the abundance of coldness in the liquid, or through the abundance of matter in the thing being boiled;
11| for then it happens that the heat in the liquid is greater than enough not to cause change, but less than enough to make uniform and concoct fully. That is why parboiled things become harder than boiled things, while their liquids are more distinctly separated out. So boiling and parboiling have been discussed, both what each is and why each occurs. Roasting is concoction by heat that is dry and foreign. For this reason, even if someone boiling something causes it to change and be concocted not by the heat of the liquid but by the heat of the fire itself, then when it is finished it becomes roasted and not boiled, and if this goes to excess it is said to be scorched; and it comes about by dry heat whenever the thing, once completed, turns out drier. That is also why the outer parts of roasted things are drier than the inner; with boiled things it is the opposite. And in the case of things worked by hand, roasting is a harder task than boiling, for it is difficult to heat the inner and outer parts uniformly. For what is nearer the fire always dries faster, and so more. So when the outer pores draw together, the moisture present within cannot be expelled, but is shut in, once the pores close up. Roasting and boiling, then, occur through craft, but, as we say, their forms are, taken generally, the same in nature as well;
12| for the affections that come about are similar, though nameless; for craft imitates nature, since the concoction of food in the body is also similar to boiling: it too occurs in something moist and hot, by the heat of the body. And some cases of indigestion are similar to parboiling. And living creatures do not arise in the process of concoction, as some say, but in the excreted matter as it putrefies in the lower belly, and then make their way back up; for concoction occurs in the upper belly, but what is separated off putrefies in the lower; the reason why has been stated elsewhere. Parboiling, then, is the opposite of boiling; and to the concoction called roasting there is likewise something opposed, though it is even more nameless. It would be something similar if, instead of roasting, there occurred a mere drying-out through a deficiency of heat, which could happen either because of the scantiness of the outside fire or because of the abundance of moisture in the thing being roasted; for then the heat is more than enough not to cause change, but less than enough to concoct fully. So it has been stated what concoction and lack of concoction are, and ripening and rawness, and boiling and roasting and their opposites.
13| Of the affective qualities — the moist and the dry — we must now state the forms. The affective principles of bodies are the moist and the dry, and everything else is a mixture of these; and whichever of the two predominates, the thing's nature is more that one — some things being more of the nature of the dry, others more of the moist. And in all of them, some will be in actuality, others in the opposite, potentially; melting stands to the meltable in just this way. Since the moist is easily bounded and the dry is hard to bound, they are affected toward one another somewhat as relish is affected by seasonings: for the moist is the cause of the dry's being bounded, and each becomes, as it were, a glue for the other, just as Empedocles too put it in his work on nature, gluing barley-meal with water. And this is why a bounded body is composed of both. Among the elements, earth is said to be most properly the dry, and water most properly the moist. That is why all bounded bodies here contain earth and water; and whichever of the two is present in greater amount, each thing appears to be characterized by that one's power. And living creatures exist only in earth and water, not in air or fire, because these are the matter of bodies.
14| Among bodily affections, these must belong first to what is determinate: hardness or softness. For what is composed of the dry and the wet must be either hard or soft. Hard is what does not yield into itself along its surface, soft is what yields but without displacing itself in return. For water is not soft: its surface does not yield to pressure in depth, but shifts round instead. So without qualification, a thing is hard or soft when it is so without qualification, and relative to another thing when it is so in relation to that. Relative to one another, then, hard and soft are indeterminate, admitting of more and less; but since we judge all perceptible things relative to perception, clearly we have also determined hard and soft without qualification relative to touch, treating touch as a mean. Hence we say what exceeds it is hard, and what falls short of it is soft.
15| A determinate body must be hard or soft by its own proper definition: for it either yields or it does not; further, it must be solidified, since this is what determines it. So since everything determinate and constituted is either soft or hard, and these consist in solidification, all composite and determinate bodies must exist not without solidification. We must therefore speak about solidification. Now the causes bearing on matter are two, the agent and the affection: the agent as that from which the motion comes, the affection as form. So this holds both of solidification and of dissolution, and of drying and of moistening. The agent acts by two powers, and what is acted on is acted on by two affections, as has been said: it acts by hot and cold, and the affection consists either in the presence or the absence of hot or cold. Since solidifying is in a way a form of drying, let us speak of this first. What is acted on is either wet or dry or composed of these. We take water as the body of the wet, and earth as that of the dry, for these are what are affected as wet and dry respectively. Hence also the cold belongs more among the things affected, for it belongs among these: both earth and water are taken as cold.
16| The cold is an agent as destructive, or accidentally so, as has been said earlier; for sometimes the cold too is said to burn and to heat, not as the hot does, but by drawing together or displacing the hot round about. What dries is whatever is water or a form of water, or contains water, whether introduced or connatural. By introduced I mean, for example, as in wool; by connatural, as in milk. Forms of water are things like these: wine, urine, whey, and in general whatever has no sediment, or only slight sediment, not because of viscosity — for in some things viscosity is the cause of nothing settling out, as in oil or pitch. Everything dries either by being heated or by being cooled, and both by heat, whether the heat is internal or external. For even things that are dried by chilling, like a garment, if the wet in it is separated out on its own, are dried by the internal heat jointly evaporating the wet, provided the wet is small in amount, the heat departing under the pressure of the surrounding cold. So everything dries, as has been said, either by being heated or by being cooled, and all by heat, whether the internal or the external heat jointly evaporates the wet. By external I mean, for example, things that are boiled; by internal, when, once removed from the heat it had, it is used up as it breathes itself away.
17| So much, then, for drying. Moistening is one thing when water comes to be by condensation, another when what has solidified melts. Of these, wind condenses into water when cooled; about melting and solidification together it will become clear. Whatever solidifies does so being either of water, or of earth and water, and this either by hot-and-dry or by cold. Hence, too, things are dissolved by their opposites — of what has been solidified by hot or by cold, whatever is dissolved is dissolved so: what has been solidified by dry heat is dissolved by water, which is wet and cold, while what has been solidified by cold is dissolved by fire, which is hot. Some things might seem to solidify by water, for example boiled honey; but it solidifies not by the water but by the cold within it. So whatever is of water does not solidify by fire. For it is dissolved by fire, and the same thing cannot be, in the same respect, the cause of contrary effects on the same thing. Further, a thing solidifies by the hot departing, so clearly it will be dissolved by the hot entering; so it solidifies through the action of the cold. Hence things that solidify in this way do not thicken; for thickening occurs when the wet departs and the dry condenses,
18| whereas water, among wet things, does not thicken at all. Whatever is common to earth and water solidifies both by fire and by cold, and thickens under both, in one way the same, in another different: by heat drawing out the wet (for as the wet evaporates the dry thickens and condenses), and by cold squeezing out the hot, along with which the wet departs as it evaporates together with it. So things that are soft but not wet do not thicken but solidify as the wet departs, for example baked pottery; but things that are wet among mixed bodies also thicken, for example milk. Many things are also first moistened, whatever previously existed as thick or hard under the action of cold, just as pottery too, when first baked, gives off vapor and becomes softer; hence it also warps in the kilns. So among things common to earth and water that solidify by cold, having more earth in them: those that solidify because the hot has departed are melted by heat, the hot entering again, for example clay when it has set; but those that solidify through chilling, with all the hot having evaporated together with it, are indissoluble except by excessive heat, but are softened, for example iron and horn.
19| Wrought iron too melts, so as to become liquid and solidify again. This is how tempered steel is made: the slag settles and is purged out below; and when it has undergone this repeatedly and become pure, this becomes tempered steel. They do not do it repeatedly, because a great loss occurs and the weight is reduced by the purging. Iron that has less removed by purging is better. Fire-resistant stone also melts, so as to drip and flow; and what solidifies, once it has flowed, becomes hard again. Millstones too melt so as to flow; and what flows, on solidifying, is black in color, and becomes similar to lime. Clay and earth also melt. Of what solidifies by dry heat, some is indissoluble, some is dissolved by wet. Pottery, then, and certain kinds of stone, whatever come to be when earth is fired through by fire, for example millstones, are indissoluble; but soda and salts are dissoluble by wet — not by every wet, however, but by cold wet. Hence they melt in water and forms of water, but do not melt in oil. For the wet-cold is opposite to the dry-hot. So if the one caused solidifying, the other will cause dissolving; for in this way opposites will be causes of opposites.
20| Now things that have more of water than of earth are thickened by fire alone, while things that have more of earth are solidified by it. That is why natron and salts belong more to earth, as do stone and pottery. The nature of olive oil presents the greatest difficulty. For if it has more of water, it ought to be solidified by cold, as ice is; if more of earth, by fire, as pottery is. But as it is, it is solidified by neither, and thickened by both. The cause is that it is full of air. That is also why it floats on water; for air too is carried upward. So cold thickens it by turning the air present within it into water; for whenever water and oil are mixed, the result is always thicker than either alone. By fire and by time it is both thickened and whitened: it is whitened because whatever water was present in it evaporates, and it is thickened because, as the heat dies away, water comes to be out of the air. So in both cases the same affection results, and through the same cause, but not in the same way. It is thickened, then, by both, but dried by neither; for neither the sun nor the cold dries it — not only because it is viscous, but also because it belongs to air.
21| The water in it is not dried out nor boiled off by fire, because it does not evaporate on account of its viscosity. Things that are mixtures of water and earth deserve to be described according to the proportion of each; for a certain kind of wine both solidifies and boils down, for example must. In all such things, when they dry, the water departs from them. A sign that it is water: the vapor condenses into water, if one wants to collect it. So whatever is left behind in these belongs to earth. Some of these, as has been said, are also both thickened and dried by cold; for cold not only solidifies, but dries the water in a thing while it thickens the air by turning it into water. And solidification, as has been said, is a kind of drying. So things that are not thickened by cold but solidified belong more to water — for example wine, urine, vinegar, lye, and whey; things that are thickened by fire without evaporating belong partly to earth, partly are common to water and air — honey belongs to earth, oil to air. Milk and blood too are common to both water and earth, though for the most part more of earth — just as with the fluids from which natron and salts are formed.
22| Stones too are formed from certain such fluids. That is why, if the whey is not separated out, it gets burned away by fire when boiled. The earthy part is also made to congeal by fig-juice, if one boils it in the right way, as physicians do when they curdle with rennet. In this way whey and cheese are separated. Once separated, the whey no longer thickens, but burns away like water. If a milk has no cheese in it, or only a little, it belongs more to water and is not nourishing. Blood is similar: it solidifies by drying as it cools. Blood that does not solidify, such as a deer's, belongs more to water, and such bloods are the coldest. That is also why it has no fibers; for fibers belong to earth and are something solid. Hence even once the fibers are removed, blood does not solidify. This will be because it does not dry out; for what remains is water, just as with milk once the cheese is removed from it. Here is a sign of it: diseased bloods refuse to solidify; for they are serous, and this serous element is phlegm and water, because it is unconcocted and not mastered by nature. Further, some things are dissoluble, such as natron, others indissoluble, such as pottery; and of these, some are softenable, such as horn, others unsoftenable, such as pottery and stone.
23| The cause is that opposites are causes of opposites, so that if a thing is solidified by two agents, cold and dry, it must necessarily be dissolved by hot and moist. Hence by fire and by water (for these are opposites): by water, whatever is solidified by fire alone; by fire, whatever is solidified by cold alone. So if a thing happens to be solidified by both, such things are the most indissoluble of all. Such are the things that, having been heated, are then solidified by cold; for it happens that when the heat departs and dries out the moisture, most of what moisture remains is squeezed together again by the cold, so that it does not even leave a passage through for moisture. And for these reasons heat does not dissolve them either; for heat dissolves only what is solidified by cold alone; nor does water dissolve them; for water does not dissolve what is solidified by cold, but only what is solidified by dry heat alone. Iron, once melted by heat, is solidified by cold, so that its solidification requires both; that is why it is indissoluble. Wood belongs to earth and air; that is why it is combustible and neither meltable nor softenable, and floats on water — except ebony. Ebony does not float: other woods have more of air, but the air has evaporated out of black ebony, and there is more of earth in it. Pottery belongs to earth alone, because it solidifies by drying little by little;
24| for water has no way in, since the only passages are those through which the air went out, and fire has no way in either, since fire is what solidified it in the first place. What solidification and melting are, then, and through how many causes and in how many kinds of things they occur, has been stated. From this it is clear that bodies are composed under the action of hot and cold, and that these do their work by thickening and solidifying. And because bodies are fashioned by these, heat is present in all of them, and in some cold too, to the degree that heat is lacking. So, since hot and cold belong to bodies because of their acting, while moist and dry belong to them because of their being acted on, the things common to all partake of both pairs. So the homogeneous bodies are composed out of water and earth, both in plants and in animals, and the things dug from mines, such as gold and silver and all others of that kind, are composed out of water and earth together with the exhalation of each enclosed within them, as has been said elsewhere. These bodies differ from one another, all of them, both in the properties peculiar to the senses and in what they are capable of producing. For being white and fragrant and capable of making sound and sweet and hot and cold is a matter of being able to produce some effect on perception, and they also differ by other affections more proper to themselves, those spoken of in terms of being acted on — I mean, for instance, being meltable and solidifiable and bendable and all other such things; for all such qualities are affective qualities, like the moist and the dry. It is by these already that bone and flesh and sinew and wood and bark and stone and each of the other homogeneous natural bodies differ from one another.
25| Let us first state their number — the affections spoken of in terms of a capacity and its lack. They are these: solidifiable and unsolidifiable, meltable and unmeltable, softenable and unsoftenable, soakable and unsoakable, bendable and unbendable, breakable and unbreakable, shatterable and unshatterable, crushable and uncrushable, moldable and unmoldable, compressible and incompressible, tractile (able to be drawn out) and non-tractile, malleable (able to be hammered out) and unmalleable, splittable and unsplittable, cuttable and uncuttable, viscous and friable, compactable and uncompactable, combustible and incombustible, fumigable (able to give off vapor when burned) and unfumigable. So most bodies, one might almost say, differ from one another in respect of these affections; let us state what capacity each of these is. Now about the solidifiable and unsolidifiable, and the meltable and unmeltable, we have spoken in general already, but let us return to it now as well. Of bodies that solidify and harden, some undergo this through heat, others through cold — through heat when it dries out the moisture, through cold when it squeezes out the heat. So they undergo this either through absence of moisture or through absence of heat: those that belong to water do so through absence of heat, those that belong to earth through absence of moisture. Now those that solidify through absence of moisture are melted by moisture, unless they have come together in such a way that the pores left are smaller than the particles of water, as with pottery; but whatever is not of this sort is entirely dissolved by moisture, for example natron, salts, and clay-earth.
26| Things that solidify through privation of heat are melted by heat, for example ice, lead, and bronze. What sorts of things, then, are solidifiable and meltable has been stated, and what sorts are unmeltable. Unsolidifiable are things that have no watery moisture and do not belong to water, but have more of heat and earth, for example honey and must (for these are, as it were, in a state of boiling), and also whatever has some water but has more of air, such as oil and molten silver, and anything viscous, such as birdlime.
27| Among solidified things, those are softenable which are not made of water — ice, for instance, is not, since all ice is of water — but rather those made more of earth: bodies in which the moisture has not been entirely drawn off, as it has in soda or salt, and which do not have an irregular structure, as pottery does, but are ductile without being penetrable by moisture, or malleable without being made of water, and are softenable by fire — for example iron, horn, and wood. Now among both meltable and unmeltable things, some are soakable and some are not: bronze, for instance, is not soakable, though it is meltable, while wool and earth are soakable, since they get wet. And bronze is meltable, but not meltable by water. But even among the things meltable by water, some are not soakable — soda and salts, for instance — for there is no other soakable thing that does not become softer when wetted. Some things, though soakable, are not meltable, for instance wool and fruits. Now soakable are those things which, being made of earth, have pores larger than the bulk of the particles of water, while being harder than water; meltable by water are those things that are porous all the way through. Why is it, then, that earth both melts and is soaked by moisture, while soda melts but is not soaked?
28| Because in soda the pores run all the way through, so that its particles are at once divided by the water, whereas in earth the pores are staggered, so that depending on how it receives the water, the effect differs. Among bodies, some are bendable and straightenable, for instance a reed and a willow-withe, while others are unbendable, for instance pottery and stone. Bendable and straightenable are those bodies whose length can change from curvature into straightness and from straightness into curvature, and to be bent and to be straightened is to shift or move into straightness or into curvature; for what curves upward and what curves downward are both instances of bending. Now motion into convexity or concavity, while the length is preserved, is bending; for if it were also motion into straightness, the thing would at once be both bent and straight — which is impossible, for the straight to be bent. And if everything that bends will bend either upward or downward, and of these the one is a transition into the convex and the other into the concave, then bending could not also be a transition into the straight; rather, bending and straightening are one thing and another. And these, then, are the things that are bendable and straightenable, and unbendable and unstraightenable.
29| Some things, again, are breakable and shatterable, either both together or separately: wood, for instance, is breakable but not shatterable; ice and stone are shatterable but not breakable; pottery is both shatterable and breakable. They differ in this: breaking is division and separation into large parts, while shattering is division into random pieces, more than two. So whatever has solidified in such a way as to have many staggered pores is shatterable (for it separates only that far), while whatever has pores extending far is breakable, and whatever has both is both. Some things are also dentable, for instance bronze and wax, others are not, for instance pottery and water. Denting is the partial displacement of a surface into depth, by a push or a blow, whereas displacement of the whole surface happens by mere contact. Such things are further either soft, as with wax, where the rest of the surface stays in place while part of it is displaced, or hard, as with bronze; and there are things that are both undentable and hard, for instance pottery (for its surface does not yield into depth), and liquid, for instance water (for water does yield, but not partially — instead it shifts elsewhere to replace itself). Of dentable things, those that remain dented once dented, and are easily dented by hand, are moldable; but those that are either not easily dented, like stone or wood, or are easily dented but the dent does not remain, like wool or sponge, are not moldable — these are instead compressible.
30| Compressible are those things which, when pushed, can contract into themselves, the surface shifting into depth without being divided, and one part being displaced in place of another — as water does, for water shifts to replace itself. Pushing is motion by the mover that occurs from contact; a blow occurs when it comes from an impetus. A thing is compressed when it has pores empty of a kindred body; and compressible are those things able to contract into their own empty spaces or into their own pores. For sometimes the spaces into which a thing contracts are not empty — as with a soaked sponge, whose pores are full — but rather it contracts into pores that are filled with something softer than the very thing that is naturally contracting into them. Compressible, then, are things like sponge, wax, flesh; incompressible are things not naturally able to contract by pushing into their own pores, either because they have none or because their pores are filled with something harder; for iron is incompressible, and so are stone and water and every liquid. Ductile are those things whose surface can be displaced sideways; for to be drawn is for the surface to shift toward the mover while remaining continuous. Some things are ductile — hair, a strap, sinew, dough, birdlime — others are not, for instance water and stone.
31| Some things, then, are both ductile and compressible at once, for instance wool; others are not both — phlegm, for instance, is not compressible but is ductile, while sponge is compressible but not ductile. There are also things malleable, for instance bronze, and things not malleable, for instance stone and wood. Malleable are those things whose surface can, by the same blow, be partially displaced both in breadth and in depth at once; unmalleable are those for which this is not possible. All malleable things are also dentable, but not all dentable things are malleable — wood, for instance; still, speaking generally, the two convert with each other. Of compressible things, some are malleable and some are not: wax and clay are malleable, wool is not, nor is water. There are also things splittable, for instance wood, and things unsplittable, for instance pottery. Splittable is what can be divided further than the dividing instrument itself divides; for a thing splits when it is divided further than the instrument divides it, and the division runs ahead of the instrument — in cutting this does not happen. Unsplittable are those things that cannot undergo this. Now nothing soft is splittable (I mean among things soft in an unqualified sense, not merely soft relative to one another —
32| for in that relative sense even iron will count as soft), nor are all hard things splittable, but only those that are neither liquid nor dentable nor shatterable. Such are the things whose pores run lengthwise — the very pores by which their parts are joined to one another — rather than crosswise. Of solid things, whether hard or soft, cuttable are those in which the division need not run ahead of the instrument by necessity, and which do not shatter when divided; things that are either liquid or of that other, shattering kind are uncuttable. Some things are both cuttable and splittable at once, for instance wood; but for the most part a thing is splittable lengthwise and cuttable crosswise. For since each thing is divided into many parts, insofar as the one thing becomes many lengths, it is splittable in that respect, and insofar as the one thing becomes many widths, it is cuttable in that respect. A thing is tenacious when it is ductile while being liquid or soft. Bodies become such through interlacing, when they are composed the way chains are; for these can stretch out and contract to a great extent. Whatever is not of this kind is crumbly. Of compressible things, those whose compression is permanent can be felted; those that cannot be felted are either wholly incompressible or have a compression that is not permanent. And some things are combustible, others incombustible: wood is combustible, and so are wool and bone, while stone and ice are incombustible.
33| Combustible things are those that have pores capable of receiving fire, and moisture weaker than the fire in the pores that run straight through. Things that either lack such pores, or have moisture stronger than fire — for instance ice and things that are very green — are incombustible. Among bodies, exhalable are those that have moisture, but have it in such a way that they do not evaporate apart from the body when they are set on fire; for vapor is the exudation, produced by burning heat, of moisture passing right through into air and breath. Exhalable things, by contrast, are given off into air over time, and of these some, as they disappear, become dry, and others become earth. This exudation differs from evaporation in that it neither moistens nor becomes wind. Wind is a continuous flow of air over a length; exhalation is the joint exudation, by burning heat, of dry and moist together, all at once. That is why it does not moisten, but rather colors. Now the exhalation of a woody body is smoke. I mean to include bones and hairs and everything of that kind under the same head; for there is no common name for them, but nonetheless by analogy they are all the same thing, just as Empedocles too says: 'The same things become hairs and leaves and the thick feathers of birds and scales, upon sturdy limbs.'
34| The exhalation of a rich body is soot, and that of an oily one is fatty reek. That is why oil neither boils down nor thickens: it is exhalable but not vaporizable, while water is not exhalable but is vaporizable. Sweet wine does exhale; for it is rich, and does the same thing as oil — it does not solidify from cold, and it burns. It is wine in name, but not in fact, for its flavor is not wine-like, which is also why it does not intoxicate. Ordinary wine has only a slight exhalation, which is why it gives off a flame. Combustible bodies are thought to be those bodies that dissolve into ash. This happens to everything that solidifies either by heat or by both cold and heat together; for such things evidently are mastered by fire. Least combustible of stones is the signet-stone, the one called the carbuncle. Among combustible things, some produce flame and some do not; and some of these are capable of charring. Flame-producing, then, are those that can yield a flame; those that cannot are flameless. Flame-producing are all those things that, without being moist, are exhalable. Pitch, oil, or wax are flame-producing more in combination with other things than by themselves. Most of all flame-producing are those that give off smoke.
35| Capable of charring are those of these things that have more of earth than of smoke. Further, some things, though meltable, are not flame-producing — bronze, for instance — and some are flame-producing but not meltable, for instance wood, while some are both, for instance frankincense. The reason is that wood has its moisture massed together and continuous throughout, so that it burns all the way through, while bronze has its moisture distributed part by part, not continuous, and too little to produce a flame; frankincense stands in one respect like the one, in another like the other. Among exhalable things, those that are not meltable are flame-producing because they are more earthy; for the dry has something in common with fire. So when this dry element becomes hot, it turns into fire. That is why flame is either wind or burning smoke. Now the exhalation of wood is smoke; that of wax and frankincense and things of that kind, and of pitch, and whatever contains pitch or is of that sort, is soot; that of oil and oily things is fatty reek. And whatever burns least by itself, because it has little of the dry in it, needs a passage through another substance to catch fire, though with another substance it burns very quickly. For this is what the rich, dry, oily thing is. So among moist things, those that are exhaled off are more of moisture, as oil and pitch, while those that burn outright are more of the dry.
36| By these affections and these differentiae the uniform bodies, as has been said, differ from one another in respect of touch, and further in smells, flavors, and colors. By uniform I mean both the mined substances, such as gold, bronze, silver, tin, iron, stone, and the other things of that kind, and whatever is produced from these by separating out, and also the parts found in animals and plants — for instance flesh, bones, sinew, skin, viscera, hairs, fibers, veins — out of which the non-uniform parts are already composed, for instance face, hand, foot, and the other things of that kind, and in plants wood, bark, leaf, root, and such things. Now since these latter are composed by a further cause, while the things out of which they are composed have as their matter the dry and the moist, that is, earth and water (for each of these two most plainly has the corresponding power), while what produces them is the hot and the cold (for these compose and solidify bodies out of those materials), let us take up which kinds of the uniform bodies belong to earth, which to water, and which are common to both. Now among composed bodies, some are moist, some soft, some hard; and which of the soft or hard ones are due to solidification has been said earlier.
37| Among moist things, then, whatever evaporates belongs to water; whatever does not, either belongs to earth, or is common to earth and water, as milk, or to earth and air, as wood, or to water and air, as oil. And whatever thickens under heat is common to both. But one might raise a difficulty about wine, among moist things: for this can be evaporated, and it thickens the way new wine does. The reason is that wine is not spoken of as a single kind, and different wines behave differently: new wine has more of earth in it than old wine, which is why it thickens most under heat and solidifies less under cold, for it has both much heat and much earth — just as in Arcadia it is so dried out by smoke in the wineskins that it is scraped off and drunk. And if every wine has sediment, then it belongs to whichever of the two, earth or water, according to how much sediment it has. Whatever thickens under cold belongs to earth; whatever thickens under both belongs jointly to more than one, as oil, honey, and sweet wine. Among solid bodies, whatever has solidified under cold belongs to water, as ice, snow, hail, frost; whatever has solidified under heat belongs to earth, as pottery, cheese, natron, salt;
38| and whatever has solidified under both is of the kind that solidifies by cooling; and these are the things deprived of both, heat and moisture, the moisture going out together with the heat. For salt solidifies by being deprived of moisture alone, as do all things that are purely of earth, while ice solidifies by being deprived of heat alone; but these other things are deprived of both. That is why they solidify under both, and had had both. Now take things whose whole moisture has been drawn off, as pottery or amber — for amber too, and whatever is said to be like tears, comes about by cooling, as myrrh, frankincense, gum. And amber, too, seems to belong to this class, and it solidifies; at any rate creatures are seen enclosed within it. And under the action of the river, the heat going out — as with honey being boiled, when it is put into water — evaporates the moisture. All these belong to earth. And some are unmeltable and unsoftenable, as amber, or certain stones, such as the tufa found in caves; for these too come to be in a way like those, and not as if by fire but as the heat passes out under the action of cold, the moisture going out together with the heat that issues from the body itself; while in the other cases it is by fire from outside. Whatever is not wholly dried out belongs more to earth, but is softenable, as iron and horn.
39| Frankincense and things like it give off vapor in much the same way as wood does. Since, then, we must posit that meltable things — those that melt under fire — are more watery in character, though some are common to both, such as wax; while those that melt under water belong rather to earth; and those that melt under neither belong either to earth or to both. If, then, everything is either liquid or solidified, and among these the things falling under the conditions we have described, with nothing in between, then everything will have been stated by which we can distinguish whether a thing belongs to earth, or to water, or is common to several, and whether it is composed by the action of fire, or of cold, or of both. Gold, then, and silver and bronze and tin and lead and glass and many nameless stones belong to water; for all these melt by heat. Again, some wines, and urine, and vinegar, and lye, and whey, and serum belong to water; for all these solidify by cold. Iron, on the other hand, and horn, and claw, and bone, and sinew, and wood, and hair, and leaves, and bark belong rather to earth. Again, amber, myrrh, frankincense, and all the things called 'tears,' and tufa, and fruits, such as pulse, and grain — these belong to earth, some of them very much so, others less than these, but to earth nonetheless.
40| For some of these can be softened, others can be burned as incense, and have come to be through cooling. Again, soda, salts, and kinds of stone — all those that neither solidify by cold nor melt by heat. Blood and semen are common to earth, water, and air: blood that has fibers belongs rather to earth, and for this reason it solidifies by cold and dissolves by moisture, while blood without fibers belongs to water, and for this reason does not solidify. Semen solidifies by cooling, as the moisture departs together with the heat.
41| Which of the solidified or liquid things are hot and which cold must be pursued from what has been said. Those belonging to water are, for the most part, cold, unless they have some heat foreign to them — for example, lye, urine, wine; those belonging to earth are, for the most part, hot, on account of the working of heat in producing them — for example, lime and ash. And we must grasp that matter itself is a kind of coldness; for since the dry and the moist are matter (for these are the passive qualities), and the bodies that most exhibit these are earth and water, and these are determined by coldness, it is clear that all bodies belonging simply to either element are rather cold, unless they have some foreign heat — for example, boiling water, or water strained through ash, since even this has the heat that comes from the ash; for in everything that has been fired there is heat, whether more or less. This is also why living creatures come to be in rotting things: for there is present a heat that has destroyed the proper heat belonging to each thing. Things that are common to more than one element have heat, since most of them are composed by heat that has concocted them. Some are the product of putrefaction, such as things that melt together. So that, while they retain their nature, they are hot — blood, semen, marrow, sap, and all such things — but once they perish and depart from their nature, they are hot no longer;
42| for what is left is the matter, which is earth or water. This is why some hold both opinions, and some say these things are cold while others say they are hot, observing that, when they are within their nature, they are hot, but that once separated from it, they solidify. This, then, is how matters stand; nevertheless, as has been determined, in those things whose matter is for the most part water, they are cold (for this is most opposed to fire), while in those whose matter is earth or air, they are rather hot. But it sometimes happens that the same things become both coldest and hottest through a foreign heat: for whatever things are most solidified and most solid are coldest of all if deprived of heat, and burn most fiercely if set on fire — for example, stone burns more than water, and water more than smoke.
43| Now that these matters have been determined, let us say, for each case, what flesh is, or bone, or the rest of the uniform parts; for we have, from their coming-to-be, the means to say out of what the nature of the uniform parts is composed — their genera, and to which genus each belongs. For the uniform parts come from the elements, and out of these, as matter, come the whole works of nature. All things exist, as regards their matter, from what has been said; but as regards their substance, they exist by their account. And this is always clearer in the case of the later things, and in general in the case of whatever are, as it were, instruments and exist for the sake of something. For it is clearer that a dead man is a man only in name. So too, then, a hand belonging to someone who has died is a hand only in name, just as stone flutes might be so called; for these too seem to be a kind of instrument only in name. Such things are less clear in the case of flesh and bone. And they are less clear still in the case of fire and water and earth: for that-for-the-sake-of-which is least evident just where matter is most abundant. For, as it were, if one took the two extremes, matter is nothing other than itself, while substance is nothing other than the account, and the things in between are analogous according to how close each one is to either extreme, since even in these cases whatever it may be exists for the sake of something, and does not consist simply of water or fire, any more than flesh or an internal organ does.
44| This holds even more of a face and a hand than of these. And all things are defined by their function: for the things able to perform their own function are truly, each of them, what they are — for example, an eye, if it sees — while what is unable to do so is so only in name, like a dead eye, or one made of stone; for a wooden saw is not a saw either, except as an image of one. So too, then, with flesh: but its function is less clear than that of the tongue. And likewise with fire: but its function, too, is perhaps less clear, physically speaking, than that of flesh. And likewise with the parts in plants, and with inanimate things, such as bronze and silver: for all of them exist by some capacity, either of acting or of being acted on, just as flesh and sinew do; but the accounts of these are not exact. So that it is not easy to discern when the function is present and when it is not, unless it is very far gone and only the shapes are left — as with the bodies of corpses that have grown old, which suddenly turn to ash in their tombs; and fruits too, which appear old only in shape, and do not seem, to perception, to have aged very much; and likewise things that have solidified out of milk. Such parts, then, admit of coming to be through heat and cold and the motions belonging to these, being solidified by the hot and the cold;
45| I mean all the uniform parts, such as flesh, bone, hair, sinews, and the like: for all of these differ by the differentiae stated earlier — by tension, by tractability, by breakability, by hardness, by softness, and by the other such qualities; and these come to be through the mixing together of the cold and the hot and their motions. But no one would think this of the non-uniform parts composed out of these — such as a head, a hand, or a foot; rather, just as the motion of coldness and heat is the cause of bronze or silver coming to be, but is no longer the cause of a saw, or a bowl, or a chest coming to be — here it is craft that is the cause, there it is nature or some other cause. Since, then, we know to which genus each of the uniform parts belongs, we must next take up, for each of them, what it is — for example, what blood is, or flesh, or seed, and each of the others; for this is how we know each thing, both why it is and what it is, if we have grasped its matter or its account, and best of all when we have both — that of its coming-to-be and of its perishing, and from where the origin of the motion comes. Once these have been made clear, we must in the same way examine the non-uniform parts, and finally the things composed out of these, such as man, plant, and the rest of such things.