Aristotle · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| [980a] All human beings by nature desire to know. A sign of this is the delight we take in the senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves, and most of all the sense that comes through the eyes. For not only with a view to action, but even when we intend to do nothing, we choose sight, so to speak, above all the others. The reason is that this, of all the senses, most makes us know things and reveals many differences among them. Now by nature animals are born with sense-perception, but in some of them memory does not arise out of this, while in others it does. [980b] And because of this the latter are more intelligent and more capable of learning than those that cannot remember: those that cannot hear sounds are intelligent without being able to learn (for example the bee, and any other kind of animal of that sort that there may be), while those that, in addition to memory, also have this sense of hearing are capable of learning. So the other animals live by appearances and memories, and share but little in experience; but the human race lives also by craft and reasoning. And experience arises in human beings out of memory; for many memories of the same thing come together to produce the capacity of a single experience. [981a] And experience seems to be pretty much like knowledge and craft, but knowledge and craft come to human beings by way of experience;
2| for, as Polus says, experience made craft, but inexperience made chance. And craft comes to be when out of many notions gained by experience a single universal judgment is formed about things that are alike. For to have the judgment that this particular thing benefited Callias when he was sick with this particular disease, and likewise Socrates, and many other individuals one by one, belongs to experience; but to judge that it benefited all people of a certain kind, marked off as one in form, when sick with this particular disease -- for example the phlegmatic, or the bilious, or those burning with fever -- belongs to craft. Now with a view to action, experience seems no whit inferior to craft, and indeed we see men of experience succeeding more than those who have theory without experience (the reason being that experience is knowledge of particulars, while craft is knowledge of universals, and actions and productions are all concerned with the particular; for the doctor does not heal man, except incidentally, but heals Callias or Socrates or some other individual so named, to whom being a man happens to belong. So if a man has the theory without the experience, and knows the universal but does not know the particular contained in it, he will often go wrong in his treatment;
3| for it is the particular that is to be treated): but nevertheless we suppose that knowing and understanding belong to craft rather than to experience, and we take craftsmen to be wiser than men of mere experience, on the assumption that in all cases wisdom follows more upon knowing; and this is because the former know the cause, while the latter do not. For men of experience know the that but not the why, while the others know the why and the cause. For this reason too we think the master craftsmen in each field are more honorable and know more, and are wiser, than the manual workers,
4| [981b] because they know the causes of the things being produced (whereas the others, like certain inanimate things, produce, but produce without knowing what they produce, as fire burns; only the inanimate things produce each of these effects by a certain nature, while the manual workers produce them through habit), on the assumption that being wiser has to do not with being practical but with having the theory and knowing the causes. And in general the mark of one who knows and one who does not know is the ability to teach, and for this reason we hold that craft, rather than experience, is knowledge; for craftsmen can teach, while men of mere experience cannot. Further, we do not hold that any of the senses is wisdom, even though these are indeed the most authoritative ways of knowing particulars; but they do not tell us the why about anything, for example why fire is hot, but only that it is hot. It is reasonable, then, that the first person to discover any craft whatsoever beyond the common perceptions should be admired by human beings, not only because there was something useful in what was discovered, but as being wise and superior to the rest; and as more crafts were discovered, some directed toward the necessities of life and others toward passing the time pleasantly, the discoverers of the latter were always supposed to be wiser than the discoverers of the former, because their branches of knowledge were not for the sake of usefulness.
5| Hence, once all such crafts had already been established, the sciences that aim neither at pleasure nor at the necessities of life were discovered, and this happened first in those places where people had leisure. This is why the mathematical arts were first put together in Egypt, for there the priestly class was allowed to be at leisure. It has been said in the Ethics what the difference is between craft and knowledge and the other things of the same kind; the point of what we are saying now is this: that what is called wisdom is universally supposed to be concerned with the first causes and the principles. So that, as has been said before, the man of experience is thought to be wiser than those who have any sense-perception whatsoever, the craftsman wiser than the man of experience, the master craftsman wiser than the manual worker, and the theoretical branches of knowledge more so than the productive.
6| [982a] That wisdom, then, is a knowledge concerned with certain principles and causes, is clear. But since it is this knowledge that we are seeking, this is what must be examined: concerned with what sort of causes and what sort of principles is wisdom a knowledge? If, then, one were to take up the conceptions we hold about the wise man, this might perhaps make the matter clearer. We suppose, first, that the wise man knows all things, as far as this is possible, without having knowledge of each of them individually; next, that the man able to know things that are difficult, and not easy for a human being to know, is wise (for perceiving by the senses is common to all, and so is easy, and nothing wise); further, that the man who is more exact and more capable of teaching the causes is wiser in every branch of knowledge; and that among the sciences, the one that is choiceworthy for its own sake and for the sake of knowing is more wisdom than the one choiceworthy for the sake of its results, and that the more governing science is more wisdom than the one that is subordinate; for the wise man ought not to be directed but to direct, and it is not he who ought to obey another, but the less wise man who ought to obey him. Such, then, and so many, are the conceptions we hold about wisdom and the wise. Of these, knowing all things must necessarily belong to the one who has the knowledge of the universal to the highest degree (for this man knows in a way all the things that fall under it), and these things -- the most universal -- are pretty much the hardest for human beings to know (for they are furthest from the senses); the most exact of the sciences are those most concerned with the first things (for the sciences based on fewer principles are more exact than those arrived at by addition, for example arithmetic is more exact than geometry); and moreover the science that is theoretical about causes is more capable of teaching (for those who state the causes concerning each thing are the ones who teach), while knowing and understanding for their own sake belong most of all to the knowledge of the most knowable object (for the man who chooses knowledge for its own sake will choose most of all the knowledge that is most fully knowledge,
7| [982b] and such is the knowledge of the most knowable object); and the things most knowable are the first things and the causes (for it is through these and out of these that the other things come to be known, but not these through the things that fall under them); and the most governing of the sciences, and more governing than the one that is subordinate, is the one that knows for the sake of what each thing is to be done: and this is the good in each case, and in general the best thing in the whole of nature. So from all that has been said, the name we are seeking falls to the same science: for this science must be theoretical about the first principles and causes; for the good, that is, the that-for-the-sake-of-which, is itself one of the causes. And that it is not a productive science is clear even from the case of the first men who philosophized: for it is owing to wonder that human beings both now and at first began to philosophize, wondering originally at the obvious perplexities close at hand, and then advancing little by little in this way and raising difficulties also about greater matters, for example about the affections of the moon, and about the sun and the stars, and about the coming to be of the universe. But the man who is perplexed and wonders thinks himself ignorant (hence the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of wisdom too, for myth is composed of wonders):
8| So if it was to escape ignorance that people philosophized, it is clear that they were pursuing knowledge for the sake of understanding, and not for the sake of any use. The very course of events bears witness to this: for it was when practically all the necessities of life were already in place, and the things that make for ease and pastime as well, that this kind of thinking began to be sought. Plainly, then, we seek it for no other need but its own; but just as we say a man is free who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so too we regard this as the only free science among the sciences, since it alone exists for its own sake. That is why the possession of it might justly be thought not a human thing; for in many ways human nature is a slave, so that, as Simonides says, 'God alone would have this privilege,' and it is not fitting for a man not to seek the knowledge that suits him. Now if the poets are right about something, and the divine is by nature prone to envy,
9| [983a] it would be likely for this to happen above all in this case, and all who excel to be unlucky. But it is not possible for the divine to be envious — rather, as the proverb says, 'poets tell many lies' — nor should we think any other science more honorable than this one. For the most divine science is also the most honorable, and this one alone would be so in two ways: the science that God would have most of all is a divine science, and so is any science concerned with divine things. And this science alone has both of these features: for God is thought to be among the causes of all things, and a kind of principle, and this sort of science either God alone would have, or he would have it most of all. All the other sciences, then, are more necessary than this one, but none is better. Yet the possession of it must in a way come to bring us to a condition opposite to that of our inquiries at the outset. For everyone begins, as we said, from wondering that things are as they are — as with self-moving marvels, for those who have not yet observed their cause, or with the solstices of the sun, or with the incommensurability of the diagonal (it seems astonishing to everyone who has not yet observed the cause that there is something that cannot be measured by the smallest unit); but the outcome must come to the opposite and the better condition, in line with the proverb, as happens also in these cases once people have learned the reason —
10| for nothing would astonish a geometer so much as if the diagonal turned out to be measurable. We have said, then, what the nature is of the science we are seeking, and what the target is that our inquiry and the whole method must hit. Since it is clear that we must acquire knowledge of the primary causes (for we say we know each thing only when we think we recognize its first cause), and causes are spoken of in four ways — of which we say one is the substance, that is, the essence (for the reason why is traced back in the end to the definition, and the primary reason why is a cause and a principle); another is the matter, that is, the substratum; a third is the source of the principle of motion; and a fourth is the cause opposed to this one, namely that for the sake of which, and the good (for this is the end of all generation and motion) — these causes have already been examined adequately by us in our work on nature,
11| [983b] but nonetheless let us also take up those who before us approached the study of the things that are and philosophized about the truth. For it is clear that they too speak of certain principles and causes; so it will be of some use to our present method to go over them, for either we will find some other kind of cause, or we will have more confidence in those we now speak of. Now most of the first philosophers thought that principles in the form of matter were the only principles of all things. For that of which all existing things are composed, that from which they first come to be, and into which they are finally destroyed — the substance persisting while it changes in its attributes — this they say is the element and this the principle of the things that are. And for this reason they think nothing is generated or destroyed, on the ground that this sort of nature is always preserved — just as we say Socrates neither comes to be, without qualification, when he becomes handsome or musical, nor is destroyed when he loses these states, because the substratum, Socrates himself, persists — so too, they say, none of the other things is either, since there is always some nature, either one or more than one, out of which the other things come to be, while it is preserved. As for the number and kind of this sort of principle, however, they do not all say the same thing. Thales, the founder of this kind of philosophy, says it is water (which is why he also declared that the earth rests on water), getting this supposition perhaps from seeing that the nourishment of all things is moist, and that heat itself is generated from moisture and lives by it (and that from which a thing comes to be is a principle of all things) — he got this supposition both for this reason and because the seeds of all things have a moist nature, while water is the principle of the nature of moist things.
12| There are some who think that the very ancients too, long before the present generation, the first to theorize about the gods, held this same opinion about nature. For they made Ocean and Tethys the parents of generation, and made water — what the poets call the Styx — the oath by which the gods swear; for what is most ancient is most honored, and an oath is sworn by what is most honored.
13| [984a] Now whether this opinion about nature happens to be an ancient and early one might perhaps be unclear, but Thales, at any rate, is said to have declared himself in this way about the first cause (Hippo no one would think worthy to rank alongside these, because of the poverty of his thought). Anaximenes and Diogenes make air prior to water, and the principle above all of the simple bodies, while Hippasus of Metapontum and Heraclitus of Ephesus make it fire, and Empedocles makes it the four elements, adding earth as a fourth to those already named (for these, he says, always persist and do not come to be, except in respect of being more or fewer, being combined into one and separated out of one). Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who was earlier in age than Empedocles but later in his achievements, says the principles are infinite in number; for he says that practically all things composed of like parts, such as water or fire, come to be and perish in this way, only by combination and separation, and in no other way come to be or perish, but persist eternally. From these thinkers, then, one might suppose that the only cause is the one spoken of in the sense of matter. But as they advanced in this way, the very subject matter opened a path for them and forced them to inquire further: for if it is above all true that all generation and destruction come from some one thing or even from several, why does this happen, and what is the cause?
14| For surely the substratum itself does not make itself change; I mean, for instance, that neither the wood nor the bronze is the cause of either changing itself, nor does the wood make a bed nor the bronze a statue, but something else is the cause of the change. And to seek this is to seek the other principle, as we would put it — that from which the principle of motion comes. Now those who from the very beginning took hold of this kind of inquiry, and said that the substratum was one, felt no difficulty about it; but some of those who say it is one, as though defeated by this very inquiry, say that the one is unmoved, and indeed that the whole of nature is unmoved, not only in respect of generation and destruction (for this is an ancient view and everyone agreed on it) but also in respect of every other kind of change as well — and this is peculiar to them.
15| [984b] Now none of those who say that the whole is one hit upon seeing a cause of this kind, except perhaps Parmenides, and he only to the extent that he posits not only one cause but in a way two. But for those who make the principles more than one it is more possible to state such a cause, for example those who posit hot and cold, or fire and earth; for they treat fire as having a nature that is motive, and water and earth and things of that kind as the opposite. But after these thinkers and such principles, since these were not adequate to generate the nature of the things that are, again, compelled by the truth itself, as we said, they went on to seek the next principle. For that some of the things that are should be well and finely disposed, and others should come to be so, is presumably not something for which fire or earth or any other such thing is either a likely cause, nor is it likely that those thinkers thought it was; nor again would it have been well to hand over a matter of such importance to what is automatic and to chance. So when someone said that intellect is present—just as it is in animals—in nature too, as the cause of the world-order and of the whole arrangement, he appeared like a sober man in contrast with the random talk of his predecessors. Now we know that Anaxagoras plainly laid hold of these accounts, but Hermotimus of Clazomenae has the credit of having stated it earlier.
16| Those, then, who understood things in this way laid down the cause of the good, at the same time, as a principle of the things that are, and as that source from which motion belongs to the things that are. One might suspect that Hesiod was the first to seek such a thing—or anyone else who posited love or desire among the things that are as a principle, as Parmenides too did; for he too, in constructing the coming-to-be of the whole, says: 'First of all the gods she devised love' (Parmenides fr. 13), while Hesiod says: 'First of all things Chaos came to be, and then broad-breasted Earth, and Love, who stands out among all the immortals' (Hesiod, Theogony 116-20)—as though it were necessary that among the things that are there should be present some cause which will move and bring things together. How one ought to rank these thinkers as to who was first, let it be left to decide later; but since the contraries of the good things also appeared to be present in nature—not only order and the fine but also disorder and the base,
17| [985a] and the bad things more numerous than the good, and the paltry more than the fine—so another man introduced love and strife, each responsible for one of these two sets. For if one were to follow Empedocles and grasp his meaning rather than what he says haltingly, one will find that love is the cause of good things and strife of bad ones; so that if someone were to say that Empedocles in a way states, and states first, that the bad and the good are principles, he would perhaps be speaking rightly, if indeed the cause of all good things is itself the good, and of bad things the bad. These thinkers, then, as we say, appear to have laid hold, up to this point, of two of the causes we distinguished in our work on nature—matter and that from which motion comes—though dimly and with nothing made clear, but as untrained men behave in fights; for they too, whirling about, often land fine blows, but neither do they fight from knowledge, nor do these thinkers seem to know what they are saying. For they plainly make hardly any use of these causes except to a small degree. Anaxagoras uses intellect as a device for world-making, and whenever he is at a loss as to what cause something is by necessity, then he drags intellect in, but in other cases he attributes what comes to be to anything rather than to intellect; and Empedocles makes more use of the causes than this man does, though not adequately either, nor does he find in them what is agreed upon.
18| At any rate in many places for him love separates and strife combines. For whenever the whole is separated into its elements by strife, then fire is combined into one, and so is each of the other elements; but whenever they again come together into the one under love, the parts must again be separated out of each element. Empedocles, then, in contrast to his predecessors, was the first to introduce the dividing of the cause, not making the principle of motion one but different principles and contrary ones; and further he was the first to speak of the elements said to be in the form of matter as four (though he does not in fact use four, but treats them as only two, fire
19| [985b] by itself, and the things opposed to it—earth and air and water—as a single nature; one could grasp this by studying his verses). This man, then, as we say, spoke of the principles in this way and in this number. Leucippus and his companion Democritus say that the elements are the full and the void, calling the one being and the other not-being—of these the full and solid is the being, the void is the not-being (for which reason they also say that being is no more than not-being, because body is no more than the void); and these they make causes of the things that are, as matter. And just as those who make the underlying substance one generate the other things by its affections, positing the rare and the dense as principles of the affections, in the same way these men too say that the differentiae are the causes of the other things. These differentiae, they say, are three: shape and order and position; for they say that what is differs only by rhythm and by contact and by turning, and of these rhythm is shape, contact is order, and turning is position: for A differs from N in shape, AN from NA in order, and Z from H in position.
20| As for motion—whence or how it will belong to the things that are—these men too, like the others, dismissed carelessly. Concerning the two causes, then, as we say, it appears that the inquiry of the earlier thinkers went this far. But among these thinkers, and before them, those called the Pythagoreans, having taken hold of mathematics, were the first to advance it, and having been brought up in it they thought its principles were the principles of all things that are. Since of these, numbers are by nature first, and in numbers they seemed to observe many resemblances to the things that are and that come to be, more than in fire and earth and water—because such-and-such an affection of numbers is justice, and such-and-such another is soul and intellect, another is opportunity, and likewise, so to speak, each of the other things—and further, since they saw the affections and ratios of harmonies expressed in numbers—since, then, all other things seemed in their nature to be modeled on numbers, and numbers seemed to be first in the whole of nature,
21| [986a] they supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things that are, and the whole heaven to be a harmony and a number; and whatever agreements they could show between numbers and harmonies on the one hand and the affections and parts of the heaven and the whole ordering of the world on the other, these they collected and fitted together. And if anything was missing anywhere, they eagerly supplied it, so that their whole system might be coherent. I mean, for example: since the decad seems to be complete and to comprehend the whole nature of numbers, they say that the bodies that move through the heaven are also ten in number, but since the visible ones are only nine, for this reason they make a tenth, the counter-earth. We have determined about these matters more exactly elsewhere. But the purpose for which we go over this is that we may learn from these men too what principles they lay down, and how they fall under the causes we have mentioned. These men too, then, plainly regard number as a principle, both as the matter for the things that are and as their affections and states; and the elements of number, they hold, are the even and the odd, and of these the one is limited and the other unlimited, and the one arises out of both of these (for it is both even and odd), and number arises out of the one, and numbers, as has been said, make up the whole heaven.
22| Others among these same thinkers say that the principles are ten, arranged in a table of opposites: limit and unlimited, odd and even, one and plurality, right and left, male and female, resting and moving, straight and curved, light and darkness, good and bad, square and oblong. This is apparently the same way Alcmaeon of Croton understood things, and either he took this account over from them or they took it over from him — for Alcmaeon came into his prime when Pythagoras was an old man, and he declared himself in a manner close to theirs. For he says that most human affairs come in pairs, meaning not, as the Pythagoreans do, opposites specifically marked out, but any chance ones — for example white and black, sweet and bitter, good and bad, great and small. He, then, threw out his views about the remaining pairs without giving them any definite order,
23| [986b] whereas the Pythagoreans declared both how many the oppositions are and what they are. From both of these thinkers, then, this much can be gathered: that the contraries are principles of the things that are. But how many these are, and which ones, one must get from the others — for how they can be brought together under the causes we have mentioned is not clearly worked out in their writings, though they appear to rank the elements as belonging under the form of matter, since they say substance is composed and molded out of these as constituents present within it. On the doctrine, then, of those older thinkers who spoke of the elements of nature as more than one, this is enough to consider. But there are some who declared themselves about the universe as being a single nature, though not all in the same way, either as regards doing so well or as regards being in accord with nature. For the present inquiry into the causes their account fits in no way at all (for they do not, like some of the natural philosophers, posit being as one and yet generate it as though out of the one taken as matter; rather they speak in a different way — the natural philosophers add motion, since they do generate the universe, but these thinkers say it is unmoved). Nevertheless this much at least is relevant to the present inquiry.
24| Parmenides, it seems, fastens on the one in point of its account, Melissus on the one in point of its matter (which is why the one says it is limited and the other says it is unlimited). Xenophanes, the first of these to posit unity (for Parmenides is said to have been his pupil), made nothing clear, and does not seem to have grasped the nature of either kind of unity, but looking out at the whole heaven he says the One is God. These men, then, as we said, must be set aside for the present investigation — two of them entirely, as being a bit too crude, namely Xenophanes and Melissus; but Parmenides seems to speak with somewhat sharper vision. For holding that, beside what is, what is not is nothing, he thinks that of necessity what is is one and nothing else exists (on which we have spoken more clearly in our work on nature); but being forced to follow the appearances, and supposing that while what is is one in respect of its account, it is many in respect of perception, he in turn posits two causes and two principles, hot and cold, calling them, for instance, fire and earth.
25| [987a] Of these he ranks the hot under what is, the other under what is not. From what has been said, then, and from the wise men who have already sat in session with us in this discussion, we have gathered this much: from the earliest thinkers, that the principle is bodily (for water and fire and things of that kind are bodies), and that some of them make the bodily principles one, others more than one, though both groups alike posit these as belonging under the form of matter; and from certain others, that besides this cause they also posit the source from which motion comes, and this again some make one and some two. Down to the Italian school, then, and apart from them, the rest have spoken about these matters rather obscurely, except that, as we said, they do happen to have made use of two causes, and of these, the one that is the source of motion, some make one and some two. The Pythagoreans, for their part, have spoken of two principles in the same way as the others, but they added this much, which is peculiar to them: that they did not think the limited and the unlimited and the one were certain other natures, such as fire or earth or something else of that sort, but that the unlimited itself and the one itself are the substance of the things of which they are predicated, and this is why they hold number to be the substance of all things.
26| On these matters, then, they declared themselves in this way; and about the what-it-is they began to speak and to give definitions, but they treated the matter far too simply. For they defined superficially, and thought that whatever thing the stated definition first applied to, that was the substance of the thing — as if one supposed that double and the number two were the same, because double first belongs to two. But presumably being double and being two are not the same thing; if they are not, the one will turn out to be many, which is in fact what happened to them as well. From the earlier thinkers and from the others, then, this much can be gathered. After the philosophies we have mentioned, the work of Plato followed, which in most respects went along with these thinkers, but also had features of its own set apart from the philosophy of the Italians. For having from his youth become familiar first with Cratylus and with the Heraclitean views, namely that all perceptible things are always flowing and that there is no knowledge about them, these views he continued to hold in this same way even later;
27| [987b] and Socrates, who occupied himself with matters of character but not at all with nature as a whole, and who in these matters sought the universal and was the first to fix his thought on definitions — Plato, accepting this from him, supposed that this activity had to do with other things and not with perceptible things, on the ground that it is impossible for there to be a common definition of any perceptible thing, since these are always changing. Such things among the things that are, then, he called Ideas, and he held that perceptible things are all spoken of alongside these and in accordance with them; for it is by participation that the many things existing get their names, which are the same as those of the forms. Only the word 'participation' did he change: for the Pythagoreans say that things exist by imitation of numbers, while Plato says by participation, changing the name. Yet what this participation or imitation of the forms might be, they left to be investigated in common. Further, besides the perceptible things and the forms, he says the objects of mathematics exist as intermediate, differing from perceptible things in being eternal and unmoved, and from the forms in that there are many alike of them, whereas the form itself is in each case one only. And since the forms are causes of the other things, he thought their elements were the elements of all the things that are.
28| As matter, then, the great and the small are principles, and as substance, the one; for it is out of these, by participation in the one, that the forms are numbers. That the one is substance, however, and is not said to be one by being something else, this he said in a manner close to the Pythagoreans; and likewise that the numbers are the causes of substance for the other things — in this too he agreed with them. But making, instead of the unlimited treated as one, a dyad, and constructing the unlimited out of the great and the small — this is peculiar to him; and further, he holds that the numbers exist apart from perceptible things, whereas they say that the things themselves are numbers, and they do not posit the objects of mathematics as intermediate between these. So then, his making the one and the numbers exist apart from things, and not as the Pythagoreans do, and his introduction of the forms, came about because of his inquiry conducted in the sphere of definitions (for the earlier thinkers had no share in dialectic); while his making the other nature a dyad came about because the numbers, apart from the first ones, can be naturally generated out of it as though out of some mold.
29| [988a] Yet in fact the result is the opposite; for it is not reasonable that it should be so. For the causes drawn from matter produce many things, whereas the form generates only once — a single table, for example, seems to come from a single portion of matter, whereas the one who imposes the form, though being one, makes many things. And it is the same with the relation of the male to the female: the female is impregnated by a single mating, but the male impregnates many; yet these are imitations of those principles. Plato, then, made these distinctions about the things under inquiry. It is clear from what has been said that he has made use of only two causes, the cause of the essence and the cause according to matter (for the forms are the cause of the essence for the other things, and the one is the cause of the forms); and what the underlying matter is, of which the forms are predicated in the case of sensible things and the one in the case of the forms, is that it is a dyad, the great and the small. Further, he assigned the cause of good and of bad to the elements respectively, one to each, which we say some of the earlier philosophers also sought to do, such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras. So we have gone through, concisely and in summary, who has spoken and how about the principles and about the truth.
30| Nevertheless, this much at least we have from them: that none of those who speak about principle and cause has spoken outside of what we have distinguished in our works on nature, but all of them appear to be touching on those causes, though dimly. For some speak of the principle as matter, whether they suppose it to be one or several, and whether they posit it as a body or as incorporeal (as Plato speaking of the great and the small, the Italians of the unlimited, Empedocles of fire and earth and water and air, Anaxagoras of the infinity of the homoeomerous parts — all these, then, have grasped this kind of cause, and further, so have those who posit air or fire or water or something denser than fire but finer than air; for indeed some have said the first element is of this sort) — these, then, have grasped only this cause. But others have grasped that from which the principle of motion comes (such as those who make friendship and strife, or intellect, or love, a principle). But no one has clearly given an account of the essence and the substance,
31| [988b] though it is above all those who posit the forms who come closest to saying it (for they do not suppose that the forms are matter for sensible things, nor that the one is matter for the forms, nor that from these comes the principle of motion — they say, rather, that these are causes of being unmoved and at rest — but they supply the forms as the essence for each of the other things, and the one as the essence for the forms). As for that for the sake of which actions and changes and motions occur, they speak of it as a cause in a certain way, but not in the way it is by nature. For those who speak of intellect or friendship posit these causes as a good, yet not as being that for the sake of which any existing or coming-to-be thing exists, but they speak of motions as coming from these. Likewise also those who say that the one or being is of such a nature say that it is the cause of substance, but not that it is for the sake of this that things are or come to be, so that it turns out that they both say and do not say that the good is a cause; for they do not speak of it simply, but only accidentally. On the point, then, that the causes have been correctly distinguished, both as to how many and of what kind, all these thinkers too seem to bear witness for us, since they are unable to lay hold of any other cause; and besides this it is clear that the principles must be sought either in this way entirely, or in some manner of this kind. How each of them has spoken, and how matters stand concerning the principles, let us go through, after this, the difficulties that arise about them.
32| Now those who posit the whole as one and a single nature as matter, and this a bodily one and having magnitude, clearly go wrong in many ways. For they posit the elements of bodies only, not of incorporeal things, though incorporeal things also exist. And in attempting to state the causes of coming-to-be and passing-away, and giving a natural account of all things, they do away with the cause of motion. Further, by not positing substance as the cause of anything, nor the essence, and besides this by readily calling any one of the simple bodies a principle except earth, without examining how they come to be from one another — I mean fire and water and earth and air. For some things come to be from one another by combination and others by separation, and this makes the greatest difference as regards being prior and posterior. For in one sense that from which things first come to be by combination would seem to be the most elemental of all,
33| [989a] and this would be that which has the smallest parts and is the finest of the bodies (this is why those who posit fire as the principle would speak most in accordance with this argument; and each of the others too agrees that the element of bodies is of this sort — at any rate none of those who say the principle is one has thought fit to say it is earth, evidently because of the largeness of its parts; but each of the other three elements has found some judge in its favor, for some say it is fire, others water, others air; yet why then do they not also say it is earth, as most people do? For they say that everything is earth, and Hesiod too says that earth was the first of bodies to come to be — so ancient and popular has this supposition turned out to be). By this reasoning, then, whether one speaks of any of these other than fire, or posits something denser than air but finer than water, one would not be speaking correctly; but if what is later in coming-to-be is prior in nature, and what is concocted and combined is later in coming-to-be, then the opposite of these would be the case — water would be prior to air, and earth prior to water. Let this, then, be said about those who posit a single cause of the sort we have described.
34| The same holds even if one posits several of these, as Empedocles says that matter is four bodies. For in his case too, some of the same difficulties and some peculiar to him must arise. For we see things coming to be from one another, as though the same body of fire and earth does not always persist (this has been discussed in our works on nature); and as regards the cause of things in motion, whether one or two should be posited, one must not think this has been stated either correctly or reasonably at all. And in general, alteration must be done away with for those who speak in this way; for hot will not come from cold, nor cold from hot. For what would the contraries themselves undergo, and what single nature would there be that becomes fire and water, which he denies? But if one were to suppose that Anaxagoras speaks of two elements, one would suppose it most in accordance with reason — a position which he himself did not articulate, but which he would nevertheless have followed of necessity, led on by those who drew him to it. For since it is in other respects absurd to say that all things were mixed together at the beginning,
35| [989b] both because it follows that unmixed things must have preexisted, and because it is not the nature of any chance thing to be mixed with any chance thing, and further because affections and accidents would then be separable from substances (for of the same things there is both mixture and separation) — nevertheless, if one were to follow him and articulate together what he means to say, he would perhaps appear to be saying something rather more up to date. For when nothing was yet separated out, clearly nothing true could be said of that substance — I mean, for example, that it was neither white nor black, nor grey nor any other color, but was necessarily colorless; for otherwise it would have had one of these colors. And likewise, by the same argument, it was also flavorless, and none of the other such things either; for it could not be of any particular quality, nor quantity, nor a "what." For it would have had one of the forms spoken of as partial, and this is impossible if indeed all things were mixed together — for then it would already have been separated out; but he says that all things were mixed except intellect, and this alone was unmixed and pure. From this, then, it follows that he speaks of the principles as being the one (for this is simple and unmixed) and the other, such as we posit the indeterminate to be before it is determined and partakes of some form; so that he speaks neither correctly nor clearly, yet he means something similar to what those who spoke later, and what appears now, mean.
36| But these thinkers happen to be at home only in accounts concerned with coming-to-be and perishing and motion (for they seek principles and causes for substance of that sort alone, and virtually nothing else). But those who make their inquiry about all beings, and who posit that some beings are perceptible and others not perceptible, evidently make their examination about both kinds. This is why one might dwell on them at greater length, to see what they say well and what not well, with a view to the investigation now before us. Now the so-called Pythagoreans use principles and elements stranger than those of the natural philosophers (the reason being that they did not take them from perceptible things: for the objects of mathematics, apart from those connected with astronomy, are without motion); yet they discuss and treat everything with respect to nature. For they generate the heaven,
37| [990a] and with respect to its parts and their affections and functions they keep careful watch on what occurs, and they spend their principles and causes on these, as if agreeing with the other natural philosophers that what is, is only so much as is perceptible and is contained by what is called the heaven. But the causes and principles they speak of, as we said, are adequate to rise even to the higher orders of beings, and are more fitting for these than for accounts concerned with nature. Yet in what way motion is to come about when only limit and the unlimited and odd and even are laid down as underlying, they say nothing, nor how it is possible, without motion and change, for there to be coming-to-be and perishing, or the functions of the bodies carried around the heaven. Further, whether one grants them that magnitude comes from these, or this is demonstrated, still in what way will some bodies be light and others have weight? For from the things they posit and speak of, they say nothing more about mathematical bodies than about perceptible ones; hence about fire or earth or the other bodies of that sort they have said nothing whatsoever, since, I think, they say nothing peculiar to perceptible things. Further, how are we to take it that the affections of number, and number itself, are causes of what exists and comes to be in the heaven, both from the beginning and now, while there is no other number beside this number out of which the world-order is composed?
38| For when in this region they place opinion and opportunity, and a little above or below injustice and judgment or mixture, and say as proof that each of these is a number, while it happens that in this place there is already a plurality of composite magnitudes, because these affections follow each of the places — is this the same number, the one in the heaven, which we must take to be each of these, or is it a different one beside it? For Plato says it is a different one; and yet he too thinks that these are numbers and are causes of these things, but that the intelligible numbers are the causes, and these others the perceptible ones. Let the Pythagoreans, then, be left aside for the present — for it is enough to have touched on them this much.
39| [990b] Those who posit the Forms as causes, in the first place, in seeking to grasp the causes of the things around us, brought in other things equal in number to these, as if someone wanting to count things, when there were fewer of them, thought he would not be able to, but made more and then counted them. For the forms are about as many as — or not fewer than — the things in search of whose causes they proceeded from these to those. For corresponding to each thing there is something else with the same name, apart from the substances — and both among other things there is one over many, and this holds both for things here and for the eternal things. Further, by none of the ways by which we show that the Forms exist does it turn out to be shown. For from some of them no syllogism necessarily follows, while from others forms come to be even of things we do not think have forms. For according to the arguments from the sciences, there will be forms of everything of which there are sciences; and according to the one-over-many argument, forms even of negations; and according to the argument that we can think of something after it has perished, forms of perishable things — for there is some image of these. Further, the more exact of the arguments produce Forms of relatives, of which we say there is no independent class in its own right, while others state the argument of the third man.
40| And in general the arguments about the Forms do away with things whose being we want more than we want the Ideas to exist — those who speak of Forms, that is. For it follows that it is not the dyad that is first but number, and the relative prior to what is in its own right, and all the other things that certain people, by following out the opinions held about the Ideas, have found themselves opposed to the principles. Further, according to the supposition by which we say the Ideas exist, there will be Forms not only of substances but of many other things as well (for the concept is one, not only in the case of substances but also in the case of the others, and there are sciences not only of substance but of other things too, and countless other consequences of this kind follow). But according to what is necessary, and the opinions held about them, if the Forms are things participated in, there must necessarily be Ideas only of substances. For they are not participated in accidentally, but each thing must participate in a Form in that respect in which the Form is not said of a subject (I mean, for example, if something participates in the Doubleness-itself, this also participates in something eternal, but accidentally — for it is accidental to the double to be eternal); so that the Forms will be substance. But the same things signify substance both here and there.
41| [991a] Or what will being something beside these things be, the one over many? And if the form is the same for the Ideas and for the things that participate in them, there will be something common to them (for why should Twoness be one and the same in the case of perishable dyads, and of the many that are yet eternal, any more than in the case of the Idea itself and some particular instance?). But if the form is not the same, they would be things with the same name only, and it would be like calling both Callias and a piece of wood 'man,' having observed no community between them at all. But most of all one might raise the difficulty what on earth the Forms contribute to the eternal things among perceptible things, or to those that come to be and perish; for they are causes neither of any motion nor of any change in them. But then, too, they are of no help toward the knowledge of other things (for they are not even the substance of these, since if they were they would be present in them), nor toward their being, at least not if they are not present in the things that participate in them. For if they were, they might perhaps seem to be causes in the way that white mixed into a white thing is a cause — but this argument is exceedingly easy to overturn, the one Anaxagoras first, and Eudoxus later, and certain others used to state (for it is easy to collect many impossibilities against an opinion of that sort).
42| But moreover, the other things do not come from the Forms in any of the ways commonly spoken of, either. And to say that they are patterns and that the other things participate in them is to speak empty words and use poetic metaphors. For what is it that works while looking to the Ideas? For it is possible for anything at all both to exist and to come to be similar to something without being modeled on it, so that, whether Socrates exists or not, someone such as Socrates might come to be; and likewise it is clear that this would hold even if Socrates were eternal. And there will be several patterns of the same thing, and so several Forms as well — for instance, of man, both Animal and Two-footed, and at the same time Man-itself too. Further, the Forms will be patterns not only of perceptible things but of themselves as well, for instance the genus, as the genus of species: so that the same thing will be both pattern and image.
43| [991b] Further, it would seem impossible for a substance to exist apart from that of which it is the substance. So how could the Forms, being the substances of things, exist apart from them? In the Phaedo the point is made in this way: that the Forms are causes both of being and of coming to be. Yet, even though the Forms exist, the things that participate in them do not come to be unless there is something to move them, and many other things come to be, such as a house and a ring, of which we do not say there are Forms. So it is clear that the other things too can both be and come to be through causes of the very kind just mentioned. Again, if the Forms are numbers, how will they be causes? Is it because existing things are different numbers — this number being man, this one Socrates, this one Callias? Then how are those numbers causes of these things? It will make no difference even if the one set is eternal and the other is not. But if it is because the things here are ratios of numbers, as a musical concord is, then clearly there is some one thing of which they are ratios. If, then, this one thing is the matter, it is evident that the numbers themselves will be ratios of one thing to another. I mean, for example, that if Callias is a ratio in numbers of fire and earth and water and air, then his Form too will be a number of certain other underlying things.
44| And man-himself, whether or not it is some number, will still be a ratio in numbers of certain things, and not a number, nor will it be some number on account of these things. Further, out of many numbers one number comes to be; but how does one Form come to be out of Forms? And if it is not out of the Forms themselves but out of the units within the number — for instance within the myriad — how do the units stand to one another? For if they are alike in kind, many absurd results will follow, and if they are not alike in kind — neither the units within a single number alike to each other, nor all the units of every number alike to all — in what respect will they differ, since they are without qualitative character? These suppositions are neither reasonable nor in accord with our thinking about the matter. Further, it becomes necessary to set up another kind of number besides these, the one arithmetic is concerned with, and all the things that some call intermediates — but how, or out of what principles, do these exist? Or why should there be intermediates between the things here and the Forms themselves? Further, each of the two units in the dyad will come from some prior dyad; yet that is impossible.
45| [992a] Further, why is number, once put together, a unity? And besides what has been said, if the units are different from one another, they ought to speak as those do who say the elements are four or two; for each of these thinkers does not call the common element 'body,' but calls the elements fire and earth, whether or not there is something common to them, namely body. But as it stands, the One is spoken of as if it were homogeneous, like fire or water. If that is so, the numbers will not be substances; rather, if there is some One-itself and this is a principle, plainly 'one' is used in more than one sense — for otherwise it is impossible. And when we wish to reduce substances to their principles, we posit lengths as coming from the long and the short, that is from a kind of small and great, and a plane from the wide and the narrow, and a body from the deep and the low. Yet how will the plane possess a line, or the solid possess a line and a plane? For the wide and narrow, on the one hand, and the deep and low, on the other, belong to a different kind. Just as number does not belong to these — since the many and the few are different from them — it is clear likewise that none of the other higher terms will belong to the lower.
46| But then again the wide is not the genus of the deep, for then the body would be a kind of plane. Further, from what will points come to exist within these? Plato in fact fought against this kind, as being a geometer's dogma, and called it the principle of the line — a position he often maintained — namely the indivisible lines. Yet there must necessarily be some limit of these; so from the very argument by which a line exists, a point exists too. And in general, though wisdom seeks the cause of things that are evident, we have left this question aside — for we say nothing about the cause from which motion has its origin — and thinking we are stating the substance of these things, we say there are other substances distinct from them, but as to how those are the substances of these, we speak in an empty way; for 'participation,' as we said before, is nothing. Nor, indeed, does what we see to be the cause in the sciences, that on account of which every intellect and every nature acts — nor does the Forms touch at all this cause, which we say is one of the principles — but for our contemporaries mathematics has become philosophy, though they say it ought to be pursued for the sake of other things.
47| [992b] Further, one might suppose that the underlying substance taken as matter is too mathematical in character, and is more a predicate and a differentia of the substance and of the matter than it is matter itself — I mean, for instance, the great and the small, just as the natural philosophers speak of the rare and the dense, saying these are the primary differentiae of the substrate; for these are a kind of excess and deficiency. And as for motion: if the great and the small are to be motion, clearly the Forms will be in motion; but if not, from where did motion come? For the whole inquiry concerning nature is thereby done away with. And what seems to be easy, to show that all things are one, does not turn out so; for by the method of setting things forth, not all things become one, but only some one thing itself — if one grants all the premises — and not even this, unless one grants that the universal is a genus, which in some cases is impossible. Nor is there any account at all of the lengths, planes, and solids that come after the numbers — neither how they exist or will exist, nor what capacity they have. For these can be neither Forms — since they are not numbers — nor the intermediates, for those are the objects of mathematics, nor the perishable things; rather, this again appears to be some other, fourth kind.
48| And in general, to seek the elements of existing things without first distinguishing the many senses in which 'existing things' is spoken of is impossible to accomplish, above all when one seeks in this way the elements out of which things are composed. For it is surely not possible to grasp the elements out of which acting or being-acted-on or the straight are composed; rather, if this is possible at all, it is possible only for substances. So to seek, or to think one has, the elements of all existing things is not true. And how, indeed, could one even learn the elements of all things? For clearly nothing already existing could be known beforehand as prior to them. For just as someone learning geometry may already know other things beforehand, but of the things his science is about, and about which he is going to learn, he has no prior knowledge — so it is likewise with everything else. So if there is a science of all things, of the kind some indeed speak of, this person would have no prior knowledge of anything. Yet all learning proceeds through things already known beforehand, either all of them or some, both learning by demonstration and learning by definitions — for the terms out of which a definition is made must be known beforehand and familiar — and likewise learning by induction. But then, even if this knowledge should happen to be innate,
49| [993a] It is astonishing how we go unaware that we possess the most sovereign of the sciences. Further, how will one know what it is composed of, and how will this become clear? For this too raises a puzzle: one might dispute about it just as one does about certain syllables — some say that "za" is made up of s, d, and a, while others say it is a different sound altogether, and none of the familiar ones. Further, the things of which there is perception — how could someone who lacks that perception know them? And yet he ought to, if indeed the elements of all things are the same, just as composite sounds are made of their own proper elements. That all thinkers evidently seek the causes named in the Physics, and that we could name no cause beyond these, is clear also from what has been said before, but they sought them dimly, and in a way all of them have been stated before, yet in another way not at all. For the earliest philosophy, on all subjects, resembles a person lisping, since it was young and just beginning, and at its first stage — since even Empedocles says that bone exists by its ratio, and this is the essence, the what-it-is-to-be, and the substance of the thing. But then it is equally necessary that flesh, too, and each of the other things also be a ratio, or else none of them is; for it is because of this that flesh and bone will exist, and each of the other things, and not because of the matter he names — fire and earth and water and air. But had someone else said this, he would necessarily have agreed with it, though he himself did not state it clearly. On these points, then, we have made things clear already, earlier; but let us return again to the puzzles that one might raise about these same matters, for perhaps from them we may find some resource for the puzzles that come later.