Aristotle ON GENERATION AND CORRUPTION Complete

Translated by H. Joachim.

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66 pages - You are on Page 31

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

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

We have thus explained what action and passion are, what things exhibit them, why they do so, and in what manner. We must go on to discuss how it is possible for action and passion to take place.

Part 8

Some philosophers think that the 'last' agent-the 'agent' in the strictest sense-enters in through certain pores, and so the patient suffers action. It is in this way, they assert, that we see and hear and exercise all our other senses. Moreover, according to them, things are seen through air and water and other transparent bodies, because such bodies possess pores, invisible indeed owing to their minuteness, but close-set and arranged in rows: and the more transparent the body, the more frequent and serial they suppose its pores to be. Such was the theory which some philosophers (induding Empedocles) advanced in regard to the structure of certain bodies. They do not restrict it to the bodies which act and suffer action: but 'combination' too, they say, takes place 'only between bodies whose pores are in reciprocal symmetry'. The most systematic and consistent theory, however, and one that applied to all bodies, was advanced by Leucippus and Democritus: and, in maintaining it, they took as their starting-point what naturally comes first.

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