Refutation of Certain Doctrines of Aristotle 7–29

From the same: “For the [nature] that remains is a joint cause with the form of the things that come to be, like a mother; but the other part of the contrariety might often seem, to one who fixes his mind on its evil-working character, not to exist at all. For since there is something divine and good and desirable, we say that the one is contrary to it, and the other is of a nature to desire and yearn for it according to its own nature. But for them it follows that the contrary desires its own destruction; and yet neither can the form desire itself, because it is not deficient, nor can the contrary, for contraries are destructive of one another. But this is matter, as if the female should desire the male, and the ugly the beautiful; only not ugly in itself but accidentally, nor female, but accidentally. It perishes and comes to be in one sense, and in another not. For as that in which [the privation is], it perishes in itself, for what perishes in it is the privation; but as potentiality, not in itself, but it must be imperishable and ungenerated. For if it came to be, something must first underlie, that from which [it comes], present in it; but this is the very nature [of matter], so that it will be before it comes to be. For I call matter the first underlying thing for each, from which something comes to be, present in it, not accidentally. And if it perishes, it will come to this last; so that it will have perished before perishing.” If, as matter and form are a principle of things that come to be, so is privation, how is matter a joint cause with the form of the things that come to be, but privation not a joint cause? If form is a principle for this reason, that from it being belongs to what comes to be, clearly privation too is a principle for this reason, that because of it not-being belongs to what comes to be. How then is privation called a principle of things that come to be? If, when form is present, privation does not remain, it is clear that when form is not present, privation remains. How then is it not absurd to say that what remains does not exist? For remaining belongs to what exists. If privation is the other part of the contrariety, and form is what works evil on it, how is form not both good and evil? Good for matter, since through it matter has being a substance; evil for privation, since it is abolished by it. If there is something divine and good and desirable, and it has a contrary, which is neither good nor desirable, then the divine will be good and not good, desirable and not desirable, and therefore divine and not divine. But if this is absurd, then the divine, the good and desirable, has no contrary. For the simply good is good for all, not for some only. If the contrary of the good does not desire the good (for it desires the destruction of its own nature, if it desires the good), and form does not desire itself (for form is without need), and the divine is desirable and yearned for, for what is it desirable and yearned for, if not for matter? Matter, then, is ensouled; for to desire and yearn belongs to what is ensouled. But if matter is ensouled, how is it not false that matter is not-being accidentally? For soul is being, and what has soul is being. If, as the female desires the male, and as the ugly the beautiful, matter desires the good, and matter is not female and ugly in itself but accidentally, clearly it does not desire the good in itself either, but accidentally. The divine, too, then, will be good and desirable and yearned for not in itself but accidentally, which is absurd to say. If matter is generated because of the form, perishable because of the privation, but ungenerated and imperishable through itself, then matter will always be perishable or generated, and never imperishable and ungenerated. For it always underlies either the privation that perishes in it or the form that comes to be in it. “Ungenerated” in the case of generated things signifies the privation of a generation that can come to be; in the case of eternal things, the negation of all generation, both past and future. For example, bronze that is to become a statue is called ungenerated, before it becomes a statue, by privation, because it can become a statue; but in the case of God “ungenerated” signifies the negation of all generation in essence, past and future. Since there are, then, two modes of ungeneratedness, in which mode is matter ungenerated? If by privation, then matter is ungenerated as the bronze is; but if matter is ungenerated by negation, then matter becomes nothing; nor can matter have to substance the relation that bronze has to the statue, as Aristotle said. If matter is ungenerated as God is, and God can make something from the ungenerated, it is clear that God can also make something from what simply is not. For the unsuitability that what is not has for something's coming to be from it by nature and by art is the same that the eternally ungenerated has for something's coming to be from it by nature and by art. How then could God make something from the eternally ungenerated, but could not from what simply is not? But disbelief that God can make something from what is not drove the first philosophers to deny all generation of beings from matter, and Aristotle, who corrected this, to abolish the generation of matter. If there is what comes to be, and there is something that this becomes, as he said above, then matter is none of these, since it is ungenerated and imperishable. If it is ungenerated and imperishable, it is necessarily ungenerated in both modes of ungeneratedness; so nothing comes to be from it, nor does anything perish in it. How then does privation perish in what is imperishable? If matter is one, but the things that come to be from it are many and different, how can matter remain ungenerated, when what is always being divided in it cannot remain undivided? If matter is one in number but two in form, and is ungenerated and imperishable, then either matter is ungenerated and imperishable, or half of it. But if matter is ungenerated and imperishable, clearly half of it is such too; and if half of it is ungenerated and imperishable and half is not, then contradictory statements about the same thing are true, which is impossible. If what receives the form either becomes that or comes to be from that, how is matter, which receives the form, ungenerated? If being ungenerated and imperishable belongs to things that exist, how is matter both not existent and ungenerated and imperishable? If what exists ungeneratedly in the ungenerated is itself ungenerated, how does privation, which is ungenerated in matter, come to be and perish? If, as was said, one of the contraries suffices to produce change by its presence and absence, what is it that changes, if matter is ungenerated and imperishable? If ungenerated and imperishable are considered with regard to substance, since what is ungenerated and imperishable is [a substance], where is the ungenerated and imperishable of matter, since matter is not a substance? If the bronze had not been generated by its prior generation, the statue would not have come to be either. How then does matter come to be, or anything from matter, if matter has not previously come to be? If the bronze did not perish, neither … , matter being imperishable? If body is not produced from incorporeal things, how has body come to be from matter and form, which are incorporeal in themselves? If indivisibility and unchangeability follow by natural necessity on the ungenerated and imperishable, how is ungenerated and imperishable matter in the species divided according to genera, and how do things that change in respect of matter come to be by alteration, as he defined above in setting out the modes of generation?

“In one way, then, nature is so called: the first underlying matter for each of the things that have in themselves a principle of motion and change; in another way, the shape and the form according to the formula. For as ‘art’ is said of what is according to art and the artistic, so ‘nature’ is said of what is according to nature and the natural.” What then would we call what is according to matter and the material, if not matter? Tell me, what else? But if we call this matter, then matter will be matter when there is what is according to matter and the material. For nature, too, is nature when there is what is according to nature and the natural; and likewise art. For things expressed in the same way have the same relation to one another. But if matter exists when what is according to matter and the material exists, then matter is not ungenerated.

Of the same, from the same book: “So that in another way nature would be, of the things that have in themselves a principle of motion, the shape and the form, which is not separable except in formula. What is from these is not nature, but by nature, as a man.” If the man is according to nature and a natural animal, how is the man not nature? For having defined it, he said, “Nature is said of what is according to nature and the …”

From the same book: “In things according to art we make the matter for the sake of the work, but in natural things it is present.” Since there is another work which is neither according to nature nor according to art, where is the matter of this work to be put? For animal comes to be from animal; and if the animal had not been first, there would not be animal from animal either. And animal from animal comes to be according to nature, but animal simply not according to nature. But if in things according to art the matter is from outside, and in things according to nature the matter is in the natural things, clearly in works that are neither according to art nor according to nature matter exists in another way; and if the one who writes the treatise on natural things makes no definition of this, he makes even what has already been defined incoherent. For if we think we know each thing when we know the first causes and the first principles, how could anyone know animal from animal, who does not know the animal that is not from animal? For that is the principle and cause of this.

From the same: “Since spontaneity and chance are causes of things of which mind or nature might be the cause, when something becomes the cause of these same things accidentally, and nothing accidental is prior to what is in itself, it is clear that the accidental cause is not prior to the cause in itself. Spontaneity and chance are therefore posterior to mind and nature. So that, if spontaneity were in the highest degree the cause of the heaven, mind and nature must be prior causes, both of many other things and of this universe.” In these words he not only failed to keep the order of first and second causes that he stated, but the heaven too, which he himself, above, in the second book of the Physics, excepted from spontaneous generation, he here subjected to generation, not only spontaneous, but also through mind and nature; which is plainly absurd, that what received its generation in essence through mind and nature, through the first causes, should again receive the same generation through the second causes. Further, how is it not among the most absurd things that the same man should sometimes … this, and sometimes call [the heaven] ungenerated, sometimes generated by nature? I will set out the passages in which he does this, so that the falsehood they contain may be known by comparing them side by side.

From the same book: “There are some who make spontaneity the cause even of this heaven and of all the things in the cosmos; for they say that from spontaneity arose the vortex and the motion that separated and set the universe in this order. And this very thing is well worth wondering at, that they say that animals and plants neither are nor come to be by chance, but that either nature … or some other such thing is the cause (for it is not any chance thing that comes to be from the seed of each, but from this kind an olive, from that kind a man), yet that the more divine of visible things come to be from spontaneity, and that there is no such cause for them as there is for animals or plants. And yet, if this is so, this very thing would be a cause for inquiry, and it is well that something be said about it. For besides being unreasonable in other respects, it is still more absurd to say these things when they see that in the heaven nothing comes to be from spontaneity, while among the things that do not come from chance many things happen by chance; and surely the contrary would have been likely.” That [he says] the heaven came to be from spontaneity, and again not from spontaneity, is shown by the passages we have set out from the second book of the Physics in the two chapters, the eleventh and the twelfth. That he says it is ungenerated and again generated by nature, I will show by setting out these words too, in which he has done this.

From Aristotle: “That the whole heaven neither came to be nor can perish, as some say, but is one and eternal, having neither beginning nor end of its whole age, but having and containing in itself infinite time, one may [gather] both from what has been said …” Having said this about the ungeneratedness of the heaven, see what Aristotle says again about its generation in the first book On the Heaven.

From the first book On the Heaven: “And nature seems rightly to have exempted from the contraries what is to be ungenerated and imperishable; for generation and perishing are in contraries.” If, of impossible things, none either is or will be possible, and it is among impossible things that what is going to be should be ungenerated, without beginning or end, having and containing in itself infinite time, then the one who says these things is ignorant of the difference between a possible and an impossible thing.

From the first book of Aristotle On the Heaven: “For nothing [that comes] from spontaneity can be either imperishable or ungenerated.” How then could anyone believe the one who says both things about the heaven? In the eleventh chapter he says that spontaneity is the cause of the heaven, but in the thirteenth that the heaven is without beginning and ungenerated.

From the second book of the Physics: “The principles that move naturally are twofold, of which one is not natural; for it does not have a principle of motion in itself. Such is anything that moves without being moved, as that which is wholly unmoved and the first of all.” How then would a principle move naturally that is neither natural nor moves according to nature? For moving naturally follows only on a natural principle that moves according to nature. If the principle that is not natural does not have in itself a principle of motion, it is clear that the natural principle has in itself a principle of motion. But a principle that has a principle is not a principle. If among things eternally unge[nerated] … [From the second book On the Heaven] … [unoriginated] nothing can be prior or posterior to anything, how is the principle that is unmoved, or that moves without being moved, the first of all, or a principle at all?

From the third book of the same treatise: “They derive their belief that there is something infinite from time (for this is infinite), and further from the fact that only so would generation and perishing not give out, if that from which what comes to be is taken were infinite.” If time always has its being in coming to be, and what comes to be did not exist before it came to be, how is it infinite, as Aristotle says? … for what is not yet is going to be present, and what is going to be is going to pass, and what has passed was going to come to be. If, because generation and perishing do not give out, generation and perishing must be infinite, then generation and perishing will also be without beginning, like the ungenerated and the imperishable. But if this is impossible, generation and perishing are not infinite.

From the same: “But neither is number, as separate, also infinite; for number is the numerable or what has number. If, then, the numerable can be numbered, it would also be possible to traverse the infinite.” If number, of what is numerable and has number, is not infinite, and past time is numerable, then past time would be finite.

From the same book: “That, if there is no infinite at all, many impossibilities follow, is clear: for there will be a beginning and an end of time, and magnitudes will not be divisible into magnitudes, and number will not be infinite.” If of the infinite one part is in actuality and another in potentiality, and it is impossible that what is now in actuality of the infinite was not first in potentiality, then it is impossible for the infinite always to be partly in actuality and partly in potentiality; rather, it is first in potentiality and later in actuality. If, as time is endless with respect to the future, so it is without beginning with respect to the past, then time will be ungenerated with respect to the past as well as with respect to the future. But if this is impossible — that time should be ungenerated with respect to the future, in which it has not yet come to be, but generated with respect to the past — then time is not without beginning. For of what is without beginning there is no generation, but of time there is. If nothing can be infinite in actuality, then the bisections of a magnitude already made are not infinite, nor is the number already reckoned; for both are in actuality. But if they are not infinite, they are finite; and if finite, they have a beginning, the one of being bisected, the other of being numbered.

From the same book: “The infinite is by addition, and also by subtraction; that magnitude is not infinite in actuality has been said, but it is by division. It remains, then, that the infinite is in potentiality. But one must not take ‘in potentiality’ as when, if it is possible for this to be a statue, this will also be a statue, as though there were an infinite that will be in actuality. But since ‘being’ is said in many ways, as the day is and the contest is by one thing after another always coming to be, so too the infinite. For in these there is both potentiality and actuality. For in general … the infinite is in potentiality by one thing after another always being taken, and what is taken is always finite, but always other and other.” If nothing is infinite in actuality, clearly everything that is in actuality is always finite; and being finite, it necessarily has a beginning; and having a beginning, it is necessarily generated; and being generated, there was a time when it was not. This holds for every infinite that is spoken of by addition and subtraction, by potentiality and by division.

“Nor is it infinite if there is something outside; but what receives what is outside becomes greater than it was before receiving what is outside. What becomes greater than itself by the addition of what is outside is always finite.” If the infinite is always in addition and subtraction, the infinite is always in generation. How then is what always has its being in coming to be without beginning? For a generated thing is not without beginning.

From the same book: “The bisections of a magnitude are infinite; so that it is in potentiality but not in actuality; but what is taken always exceeds every determinate quantity; yet this number is not determinate, nor does the infinity remain, but it comes to be, as also time and the number …” If the infinity does not remain, but comes to be, as also time and the number of time, then nothing infinite is ungenerated. And if every infinite is generated, then all the other things in which the infinite is said to be are also generated. If what happens to the infinite necessarily happens also to the things in which infinity is, and it happens to the infinite to come to be and to have a beginning, then time is generated and has a beginning; and likewise motion, of which time is the number.

From the fourth book of the same treatise: “For what is not is nowhere.” How then [is] matter [anywhere], being nothing, neither substance, nor one, nor a “this”?

From the same book: “Hesiod too would seem to speak rightly in making chaos first; at any rate he says, ‘First of all came Chaos, and then …,’ as if there had to be first a space for the things that are, because he thought, as most people do, that everything is somewhere and in a place. If it is such, the power of place would be something wonderful, and prior to all things. For that without which nothing else is must be prior to the others.” … [If all things are] in place by natural necessity, as Hesiod said, and Aristotle also bore witness to the rightness of the saying, how is it not impossible to say that the heaven, which is in place, is ungenerated? For this is the same as saying that the generated is prior to the ungenerated.

From the same book: “First, then, one must observe that place would not have been sought if there were no motion with respect to place. For this is why we think the heaven above all is in place, because it is always in motion.” If it is impossible for the ungenerated to need the generated in order to be and in order to be moved, then it is impossible for the heaven to be ungenerated. For it needs place in order to be and in order to be moved.

From the same: “For place has magnitude, but no body.” If place has finite dimensions and magnitude, then place is generated; if infinite, then either in potentiality or in actuality. But if in potentiality, place is generated, like time and the number of time; if in actuality, then the argument that says nothing can be infinite in actuality is false. If place is what it is, and has what it has, by someone's providence, then place is generated and second to providence; but if place is what it is, and has what it has, ungeneratedly and without beginning, then place is ungenerated and first of all things in place, among which are the heaven and the things that appear in the heaven. For that without which nothing else is must be first of the others.

From the same: “For as, if something alters, there is this which is now white but formerly black, for which reason we say that matter is something, so place too seems to be something through some such appearance; except that the former is because what was air is now water, but place because where air was, there now is water.” If the relation that place has to the things in it, matter has to the things in it, through a similar appearance, and place is ungraspable, and so is matter, then matter is none of the things that are altered and come to be in it, and it is not a substance. How then was matter posited as a substance …

From the same: “Every body that is movable by locomotion or by growth is in itself somewhere; but the heaven, as has been said, is not somewhere as a whole, nor in any place, since no body contains it.” If what is movable by locomotion is somewhere in itself, and the heaven is movable by locomotion, then the heaven too must be somewhere in itself. But if not the second, then not the first either; for they are inseparable from one another … If the heaven is not in place in itself, how, as it moves in a circle, do some of its parts that are above come to be below, and those below come to be above? And if it is above and below in its own parts, how is it not false to say that the heaven is not in place?

From the same book: “Of a point there is no place.” So the point is not anywhere, like what is not. But if this is false, the point is a being, and somewhere. And if it is somewhere, it must also have a place.