[984a]
[1]
Whether
this view of the primary entity is really ancient and time-honored may
perhaps be considered uncertain; however, it is said that this was
Thales' opinion
concerning the first cause. (I say nothing of Hippo,1 because no one would presume to include him in this
company, in view of the paltriness of his intelligence.)Anaximenes2 and Diogenes3
held that air is prior to water, and is of all corporeal elements most
truly the first principle. Hippasus4 of Metapontum and Heraclitus5 of Ephesus hold
this of fire; and Empedocles6—adding
earth as a fourth to those already mentioned—takes all four.
These, he says, always persist, and are only generated in respect of
multitude and paucity, according as they are combined into unity or
differentiated out of unity.7Anaxagoras of Clazomenae—prior to Empedocles in point of
age, but posterior in his activities—says that the first
principles are infinite in number. For he says that as a general rule
all things which are, like fire and water,8 homoeomerous, are
generated and destroyed in this sense only, by combination and
differentiation; otherwise they are neither generated nor destroyed,
but persist eternally.9From this account
it might be supposed that the only cause is of the kind called
"material." But as men proceeded in this way, the very circumstances
of the case led them on and compelled them to seek further; because if
it is really true
[20]
that all
generation and destruction is out of some one entity or even more than
one, why does this happen, and what is the
cause?It is surely
not the substrate itself which causes itself to change. I mean, e.g.,
that neither wood nor bronze is responsible for changing itself; wood
does not make a bed, nor bronze a statue, but something else is the
cause of the change. Now to investigate this is to investigate the
second type of cause: the source of motion, as we should
say.Those who were the very first to take up this
inquiry, and who maintained that the substrate is one thing, had no
misgivings on the subject; but some of those10 who regard it as
one thing, being baffled, as it were, by the inquiry, say that that
one thing (and indeed the whole physical world) is immovable in
respect not only of generation and destruction (this was a primitive
belief and was generally admitted) but of all other change. This
belief is peculiar to them.
1 Hippo of Samos, a medical writer and eclectic philosopher who lived in the latter half of the fifth century B.C. Cf.Aristot. De Anima 405b 2.
2 The third Milesian monist; fl. circa 545 B.C.
3 Diogenes of Apollonia, an eclectic philosopher roughly contemporary with Hippo.
4 A Pythagorean, probably slightly junior to Heraclitus.
5 Fl. about 500 B.C.
6 Of Acragas; fl. 450 B.C.
7 Cf. Empedocles, Fr. 17 (Diels), R.P. 166; Burnet, E.G.P. 108-109.
8 This is Aristotle's illustration; apparently Anaxagoras did not regard the "elements" as homoeomerous (i.e. composed of parts which are similar to one another and to the whole). Cf. Aristot. De Caelo 302a 28, Aristot. De Gen. et Corr. 314a 24.
9 Cf. Anaxagoras Fr. 4 (Diels); and see Burnet, E.G.P. 130.
10 i.e. the Eleatic school.
Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vols.17, 18, translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1933, 1989.
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