Aristotle METEOROLOGY Complete

Translated by E. Webster.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

100 pages - You are on Page 75

Mock suns and rods are found, as we stated, about sunset and sunrise, not above the sun nor below it, but beside it. They are not found very close to the sun, nor very far from it, for the sun dissolves the cloud if it is near, but if it is far off the reflection cannot take place, since sight weakens when it is reflected from a small mirror to a very distant object. (This is why a halo is never found opposite to the sun.) If the cloud is above the sun and close to it the sun will dissolve it; if it is above the sun but at a distance the sight is too weak for the reflection to take place, and so it will not reach the sun. But at the side of the sun, it is possible for the mirror to be at such an interval that the sun does not dissolve the cloud, and yet sight reaches it undiminished because it moves close to the earth and is not dissipated in the immensity of space. It cannot subsist below the sun because close to the earth the sun's rays would dissolve it, but if it were high up and the sun in the middle of the heavens, sight would be dissipated. Indeed, even by the side of the sun, it is not found when the sun is in the middle of the sky, for then the line of vision is not close to the earth, and so but little sight reaches the mirror and the reflection from it is altogether feeble.

Some account has now been given of the effects of the secretion above the surface of the earth; we must go on to describe its operations below, when it is shut up in the parts of the earth.

Just as its twofold nature gives rise to various effects in the upper region, so here it causes two varieties of bodies. We maintain that there are two exhalations, one vaporous the other smoky, and there correspond two kinds of bodies that originate in the earth, 'fossiles' and metals. The heat of the dry exhalation is the cause of all 'fossiles'. Such are the kinds of stones that cannot be melted, and realgar, and ochre, and ruddle, and sulphur, and the other things of that kind, most 'fossiles' being either coloured lye or, like cinnabar, a stone compounded of it. The vaporous exhalation is the cause of all metals, those bodies which are either fusible or malleable such as iron, copper, gold. All these originate from the imprisonment of the vaporous exhalation in the earth, and especially in stones. Their dryness compresses it, and it congeals just as dew or hoar-frost does when it has been separated off, though in the present case the metals are generated before that segregation occurs. Hence, they are water in a sense, and in a sense not. Their matter was that which might have become water, but it can no longer do so: nor are they, like savours, due to a qualitative change in actual water. Copper and gold are not formed like that, but in every case the evaporation congealed before water was formed. Hence, they all (except gold) are affected by fire, and they possess an admixture of earth; for they still contain the dry exhalation.

This is the general theory of all these bodies, but we must take up each kind of them and discuss it separately.

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