Plutarch, De communibus notitiis adversus Stoicos
Goodwin, Ed.

It is moreover against sense to say that nothing touches another; nor is this less absurd, that bodies touch one another, but touch by nothing. For they are necessitated to admit these things, who allow not the least parts of a body, but assume something which is before that which seems to touch, and never cease to proceed still farther. What, therefore, these men principally object to the patrons of those indivisible bodies called atoms is this, that there is neither a touching of the whole by the whole, nor of the parts by the parts; for that the one makes not a touching but a mixture, and that the other is not possible, these individuals having no parts. How then do not they themselves fall into the same inconvenience, leaving no first or last part, whilst they say, that whole bodies mutually touch one another by a term or extremity and not by a part? But this term is not a body; therefore one body shall touch one another by that which is incorporeal, and again shall not touch, that which is incorporeal coming between them. And if it shall touch, the body shall both do and suffer something by that which is incorporeal. For it is the nature of bodies mutually to do and suffer, and to touch. But if the body has a touching by that [p. 417] which is incorporeal, it will have also a contact, and a mixture, and a coalition. Again, in these contacts and mixtures the extremities of the bodies must either remain, or not remain but be corrupted. Now both of these are against sense. For neither do they themselves admit corruptions and generations of incorporeal things; nor can there be a mixture and coalition of bodies retaining their own extremities. For the extremity determines and constitutes the nature of the body; and mixtions, unless the mutual laying of parts by parts are thereby understood, wholly confound all those that are mixed. And, as these men say, we must admit the corruption of extremities in mixtures, and their generation again in the separation of them. But this none can easily understand. Now by what bodies mutually touch each other, by the same they press, thrust, and crush each other. Now that this should be done or suffered by things that are incorporeal, is impossible and not so much as to be imagined. But yet this they would constrain us to conceive. For if a sphere touch a plane by a point, it is manifest that it may be also drawn over the plane upon a point; and if the superficies of it is painted with vermilion, it will imprint a red line on the plane; and if it is fiery hot, it will burn the plane. Now for an incorporeal thing to color, or a body to be burned by that which is incorporeal, is against sense. But if we should imagine an earthen or glassy sphere to fall from on high upon a plane of stone, it were against reason to think it would not be broken, being struck against that which is hard and solid; but it would be more absurd that it should be broken, falling upon an extremity or point that is incorporeal. So that the presumptions concerning things incorporeal and corporeal are wholly disturbed, or rather taken away, by their joining to them many impossibilities.