Aristotle ON GENERATION AND CORRUPTION Complete

Translated by H. Joachim.

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66 pages - You are on Page 28

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

The account just given may serve to distinguish and define the 'contact' which occurs in the things of Nature.

Part 7

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

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