{"collection":"Classics","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/cla/ari/ogc/ogc01.htm","path":"cla/ari/ogc/ogc01.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/cla/ari/ogc/ogc01.htm","text":"OUR next task is to study coming-to-be and passing-away. We are to distinguish the causes, and to state the definitions, of these processes considered in general-as changes predicable uniformly of all the things that come-to-be and pass-away by nature. Further, we are to study growth and \u2018alteration\u2019. We must inquire what each of them is; and whether \u2018alteration\u2019 is to be identified with coming-to-be, or whether to these different names there correspond two separate processes with distinct natures.\nOn this question, indeed, the early philosophers are divided. Some of them assert that the so-called \u2018unqualified coming-to-be\u2019 is \u2018alteration\u2019, while others maintain that \u2018alteration\u2019 and coming-to-be are distinct. For those who say that the universe is one something (i.e. those who generate all things out of one thing) are bound to assert that coming-to-be is \u2018alteration\u2019, and that whatever \u2018comes-to-be\u2019 in the proper sense of the term is \u2018being altered\u2019: but those who make the matter of things more than one must distinguish coming-to-be from \u2018alteration\u2019. To this latter class belong Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Leucippus. And yet Anaxagoras himself failed to understand his own utterance. He says, at all events, that coming-to-be and passing-away are the same as \u2018being altered\u2019:\u2019 yet, in common with other thinkers, he affirms that the elements are many. Thus Empedocles holds that the corporeal elements are four, while all the elements-including those which initiate movement-are six in number; whereas Anaxagoras agrees with Leucippus and Democritus that the elements are infinite.\n(Anaxagoras posits as elements the \u2018homoeomeries\u2019, viz. bone, flesh, marrow, and everything else which is such that part and whole are the same in name and nature; while Democritus and Leucippus say that there are indivisible bodies, infinite both in number and in the varieties of their shapes, of which everything else is composed-the compounds differing one from another according to the shapes, \u2018positions\u2019, and \u2018groupings\u2019 of their constituents.)\nFor the views of the school of Anaxagoras seem diametrically opposed to those of the followers of Empedocles. Empedocles says that Fire, Water, Air, and Earth are four elements, and are thus \u2018simple\u2019 rather than flesh, bone, and bodies which, like these, are \u2018homoeomeries\u2019. But the followers of Anaxagoras regard the \u2018homoeomeries\u2019 as \u2018simple\u2019 and elements, whilst they affirm that Earth, Fire, Water, and Air are composite; for each of these is (according to them) a \u2018common seminary\u2019 of all the \u2018homoeomeries\u2019.\nThose, then, who construct all things out of a single element, must maintain that coming-to-be and passing-away are \u2018alteration\u2019. For they must affirm that the underlying something always remains identical and one; and change of such a substratum is what we call \u2018altering\u2019 Those, on the other hand, who make the ultimate kinds of things more than one, must maintain that \u2018alteration\u2019 is distinct from coming-to-be: for coming-to-be and passing-away result from the consilience and the dissolution of the many kinds. That is why Empedocles too uses language to this effect, when he says \u2018There is no coming-to-be of anything, but only a mingling and a divorce of what has been mingled\u2019. Thus it is clear (i) that to describe coming-to-be and passing-away in these terms is in accordance with their fundamental assumption, and (ii) that they do in fact so describe them: nevertheless, they too must recognize \u2018alteration\u2019 as a fact distinct from coming to-be, though it is impossible for them to do so consistently with what they say.\nThat we are right in this criticism is easy to perceive. For \u2018alteration\u2019 is a fact of observation. While the substance of the thing remains unchanged, we see it \u2018altering\u2019 just as we see in it the changes of magnitude called \u2018growth\u2019 and \u2018diminution\u2019. Nevertheless, the statements of those who posit more \u2018original reals\u2019 than one make \u2018alteration\u2019 impossible. For \u2018alteration, as we assert, takes place in respect to certain qualities: and these qualities (I mean, e.g. hot-cold, white-black, dry-moist, soft-hard, and so forth) are, all of them, differences characterizing the \u2018elements\u2019. The actual words of Empedocles may be quoted in illustration\nThe sun everywhere bright to see, and hot,\n The rain everywhere dark and cold;\nand he distinctively characterizes his remaining elements in a similar manner. Since, therefore, it is not possible for Fire to become Water, or Water to become Earth, neither will it be possible for anything white to become black, or anything soft to become hard; and the same argument applies to all the other qualities. Yet this is what \u2018alteration\u2019 essentially is.\nIt follows, as an obvious corollary, that a single matter must always be assumed as underlying the contrary \u2018poles\u2019 of any change whether change of place, or growth and diminution, or \u2018alteration\u2019; further, that the being of this matter and the being of \u2018alteration\u2019 stand and fall together. For if the change is \u2018alteration\u2019, then the substratum is a single element; i.e. all things which admit of change into one another have a single matter. And, conversely, if the substratum of the changing things is one, there is \u2018alteration\u2019.\nEmpedocles, indeed, seems to contradict his own statements as well as the observed facts. For he denies that any one of his elements comes-to-be out of any other, insisting on the contrary that they are the things out of which everything else comes-to-be; and yet (having brought the entirety of existing things, except Strife, together into one) he maintains, simultaneously with this denial, that each thing once more comes-to-be out of the One. Hence it was clearly out of a One that this came-to-be Water, and that Fire, various portions of it being separated off by certain characteristic differences or qualities-as indeed he calls the sun \u2018white and hot\u2019, and the earth \u2018heavy and hard\u2019. If, therefore, these characteristic differences be taken away (for they can be taken away, since they came-to-be), it will clearly be inevitable for Earth to come to-be out of Water and Water out of Earth, and for each of the other elements to undergo a similar transformation-not only then, but also now-if, and because, they change their qualities. And, to judge by what he says, the qualities are such that they can be \u2018attached\u2019 to things and can again be \u2018separated\u2019 from them, especially since Strife and Love are still fighting with one another for the mastery. It was owing to this same conflict that the elements were generated from a One at the former period. I say \u2018generated\u2019, for presumably Fire, Earth, and Water had no distinctive existence at all while merged in one.\nThere is another obscurity in the theory Empedocles. Are we to regard the One as his \u2018original real\u2019? Or is it the Many-i.e. Fire and Earth, and the bodies co-ordinate with these? For the One is an \u2018element\u2019 in so far as it underlies the process as matter-as that out of which Earth and Fire come-to-be through a change of qualities due to \u2018the motion\u2019. On the other hand, in so far as the One results from composition (by a consilience of the Many), whereas they result from disintegration the Many are more \u2018elementary\u2019 than the One, and prior to it in their nature.","title":"Aristotle: On Generation and Corruption: Book I: Chapter I","type":"page"}