For it were more tolerable to say that many parts of Jupiter are,
through his weakness and want of power, hurried on to do many absurd
things against his nature and will, than that there is not any
intemperance or wickedness of which Jupiter is not the cause. Moreover,
since they affirm the world to be a city and the stars citizens, if
this be so, there must be also tribes-men and magistrates, the sun must
be some consul, and the evening star a praetor or mayor of a city. Now
I know not whether any one that shall go about to confute such things
will not show himself more absurd than those who assert and affirm them.
35. Is it not therefore against sense to say that the seed is more
and greater than that which is produced of it? For we see that Nature
in all animals and plants, even those that are wild, has taken small,
slender, and scarce visible things for principles of generation to
the greatest. For it does not only from a grain of wheat produce an
ear-bearing stalk, or a vine from the stone of a grape; but from
a small berry or acorn which has escaped being eaten by the bird,
kindling and setting generation on fire (as it were) from a little
spark, it sends forth the stock of a bush, or the tall body of an
oak, palm, or pine tree. Whence also they say that seed is in Greek
called σπέρμα, as it were, the σπείρασις or the _coiling up_ of a great
mass in a little compass; and that Nature has the name of φύσις, as
if it were the _inflation_ (ἐμφύσησις) and diffusion of reason and
numbers opened and loosened by it. But now, in opposition to this,
they maintain that fire is the seed of the world, which shall after
the conflagration change into seed the world, which will then have a
copious nature from a smaller body and bulk, and possess an infinite
space of vacuum filled by its increase; and the world being made, the
size again recedes and settles, the matter being after the generation
gathered and contracted into itself.
36. You may hear them and read many of their writings in which they
jangle with the Academics, and cry out against them as confounding
all things with their doctrine of indistinguishable identity, and as
vehemently contending that there is but one quality in two substances.
And yet there is no man who understands not this, and would not on
the contrary think it wonderful and extremely strange if there should
not in all time be found a dove exactly and in all respects like to
another dove, a bee to a bee, a grain of wheat to a grain of wheat,
or (as the proverb has it) one fig to another. But these things are
plainly against common sense which the Stoics say and feign,—that
there are in one substance two particular qualities, and that the same
substance, which has particularly one quality, when another quality is
added, receives and equally conserves them both. For if there may be
two, there may be also three, four, and five, and even more than you
can name, in one and the same substance; I say not in its different
parts, but all alike in the whole, though ever infinite in number. For
Chrysippus says, that Jupiter and the world are like to man, as is also
Providence to the soul; when therefore the conflagration shall be,
Jupiter, who alone of all the Gods is incorruptible, will retire into
Providence, and they being together, will both perpetually remain in
the one substance of the ether.
37. But leaving now the Gods, and beseeching them to give these Stoics
common sense and a common understanding, let us look into their
doctrines concerning the elements. It is against the common conceptions
that one body should be the place of another, or that a body should
penetrate through a body, neither of them containing any vacuity, but
the full passing into the full, and that which has no vacuity—but
is full and has no place by reason of its continuity—receiving the
mixture. But these men, not thrusting one thing into one, nor yet two
or three or ten together, but jumbling all the parts of the world,
being cut piecemeal, into any one thing which they shall first light
on, and saying that the very least which is perceived by sense will
contain the greatest that shall come unto it, boldly frame a new
doctrine, convicting themselves here, as in many other things, of
taking for their suppositions things repugnant to common sense. And
presently upon this they are forced to admit into their discourse many
monstrous and strange positions, mixing whole bodies with whole; of
which this also is one, that three are four. For this others put as an
example of those things which cannot be conceived even in thought. But
to the Stoics it is a matter of truth, that when one cup of wine is
mixed with two of water, if it is not to be lost but the mixture is to
be equalized, it must be extended through the whole and be confounded
therewith, so as to make that which was one two by the equalization of
the mixture. For the one remains, but is extended as much as two, and
thus is equal to the double of itself. Now if it happens in the mixture
with two to take the measure of two in the diffusion, this is together
the measure both of three and four,—of three because one is mixed
with two, and of four because, being mixed with two, it has an equal
quantity with those with which it is mixed. Now this fine subtilty is
a consequence of their putting bodies into a body, and so likewise
is the unintelligibleness of the manner how one is contained in the
other. For it is of necessity that, of bodies passing one into another
by mixture, the one should not contain and the other be contained, nor
the one receive and the other be received within; for this would not
be a mixture, but a contiguity and touching of the superficies, the
one entering in, and the other enclosing it without, and the rest of
the parts remaining unmixed and pure, and so it would be merely many
different things. But there being a necessity, according to their
axiom of mixture, that the things which are mixed should be mingled
one within the other, and that the same things should together be
contained by being within, and by receiving contain the other and that
neither of them could possibly exist again as it was before, it comes
to pass that both the subjects of the mixture mutually penetrate each
other, and that there is not any part of either remaining separate, but
that they are necessarily all filled with each other.
Here now that famous leg of Arcesilaus comes in, with much laughter
insulting over their absurdities; for if these mixtures are through the
whole, what should hinder but that, a leg being cut off and putrefied
and cast into the sea and diffused, not only Antigonus’s fleet (as
Arcesilaus said) might sail through it, but also Xerxes’s twelve
hundred ships, together with the Grecians’ three hundred galleys, might
fight in it? For the progress will not henceforth fail, nor the lesser
cease to be in the greater; or else the mixture will be at an end, and
the extremity of it, touching where it shall end, will not pass through
the whole, but will give over being mingled. But if the mixture is
through the whole, the leg will not indeed of itself afford the Greeks
room for the sea-fight, for to this there is need of putrefaction and
change; but if one glass or but one drop of wine shall fall from hence
into the Aegean or Cretan Sea, it will pass into the Ocean or main
Atlantic Sea, not lightly touching its superficies, but being spread
quite through it in depth, breadth, and length. And this Chrysippus
admits, saying immediately in his First Book of Natural Questions, that
there is nothing to hinder one drop of wine from being mixed with the
whole sea. And that we may not wonder at this, he says that this one
drop will by mixtion extend through the whole world; than which I know
not any thing that can appear more absurd.
38. And this also is against sense, that there is not in the nature
of bodies any thing either supreme or first or last, in which the
magnitude of the body may terminate; but that there is always some
phenomenon beyond the assumed body, and that this still going on
carries the subject to infinity and undeterminateness. For one body
cannot be imagined greater or less than another, if both of them may
by their parts proceed _in infinitum_; but the nature of inequality
is taken away. For of things that are esteemed unequal, the one falls
short in its last parts, and the other goes on and exceeds. Now if
there is no inequality, it follows that there is no unevenness nor
roughness of bodies; for unevenness is the inequality of the same
superficies with itself, and roughness is an unevenness joined with
hardness; neither of which is left us by those who terminate no body
in its last part, but extend them all by the multitude of their parts
unto an infinity. And yet is it not evident that a man consists of more
parts than a finger, and the world of more than a man? This indeed all
men know and understand, unless they become Stoics; but if they are
once Stoics, they on the contrary say and think that a man has no more
parts than a finger, nor the world than a man. For division reduces
bodies to an infinity; and of infinites neither is more or less or
exceeds in multitude, or the parts of the remainder will cease to be
divided and to afford a multitude of themselves.
LAMPRIAS. How then do they extricate themselves out of these
difficulties?
DIADUMENUS. Surely with very great cunning and courage. For Chrysippus
says: “If we are asked, if we have any parts, and how many, and of what
and how many parts they consist, we are to use a distinction, making
it a position that the whole body is compacted of the head, trunk,
and legs, as if that were all which is enquired and doubted of. But
if they extend their interrogation to the last parts, no such thing
is to be undertaken, but we are to say that they consist not of any
certain parts, nor yet of so many, nor of infinite, nor of finite.” And
I seem to myself to have used his very words, that you may perceive
how he maintains the common notions, forbidding us to think of what
or how many parts every body is compacted, and whether of infinite or
finite. For if there were any medium between finite and infinite, as
the indifferent is between good and evil, he should, by telling us
what that is, have solved the difficulty. But if—as that which is not
equal is presently understood to be unequal, and that which is not
mortal to be immortal—we also understand that which is not finite to
be immediately infinite, to say that a body consists of parts neither
finite nor infinite is, in my opinion, the same thing as to affirm that
an argument is compacted of positions neither true nor false....
39. To this he with a certain youthful rashness adds, that in a pyramid
consisting of triangles, the sides inclining to the juncture are
unequal, and yet do not exceed one another in that they are greater.
Thus does he keep the common notions. For if there is any thing
greater and not exceeding, there will be also something less and not
deficient, and so also something unequal which neither exceeds nor is
deficient; that is, there will be an unequal thing equal, a greater
not greater, and a less not less. See it yet farther, in what manner
he answered Democritus, enquiring philosophically and properly, if
a cone is divided by a plane parallel with its base, what is to be
thought of the superficies of its segments, whether they are equal or
unequal; for if they are unequal, they will render the cone uneven,
receiving many step-like incisions and roughnesses; but if they are
equal, the sections will be equal, and the cone will seem to have
the same qualities as the cylinder, to wit, to be composed not of
unequal but of equal circles; which is most absurd. Here, that he may
convince Democritus of ignorance, he says, that the superficies are
neither equal or unequal, but that the bodies are unequal, because the
superficies are neither equal nor unequal. Indeed to assert this for a
law, that bodies are unequal while the superficies are not unequal, is
the part of a man who takes to himself a wonderful liberty of writing
whatever comes into his head. For reason and manifest evidence, on
the contrary, give us to understand, that the superficies of unequal
bodies are unequal, and that the bigger the body is, the greater also
is the superficies, unless the excess, by which it is the greater, is
void of a superficies. For if the superficies of the greater bodies
do not exceed those of the less, but sooner fail, a part of that body
which has an end will be without an end and infinite. For if he says
that he is compelled to this,... For those rabbeted incisions, which
he suspects in a cone, are made by the inequality of the body, and not
of the superficies. It is ridiculous therefore to take the superficies
out of the account, and after all to leave the inequality in the
bodies themselves. But to persist still in this matter, what is more
repugnant to sense than the imagining of such things? For if we admit
that one superficies is neither equal nor unequal to another, we may
say also of magnitude and of number, that one is neither equal nor
unequal to another; and this, not having any thing that we can call
or think to be a neuter or medium between equal and unequal. Besides,
if there are superficies neither equal nor unequal, what hinders but
there may be also circles neither equal nor unequal? For indeed these
superficies of conic sections are circles. And if circles, why may not
also their diameters be neither equal nor unequal? And if so, why not
also angles, triangles, parallelograms, parallelopipeds, and bodies?
For if the longitudes are neither equal nor unequal to one another, so
will the weight, percussion, and bodies be neither equal nor unequal.
How then dare these men inveigh against those who introduce vacuities,
and suppose that there are some indivisible atoms, and who say that
motion and rest are not inconsistent with each other, when themselves
affirm such axioms as these to be false: If any things are not equal
to one another, they are unequal to one another; and the same things
are not equal and unequal to one another? But when he says that there
is something greater and yet not exceeding, it were worth the while
to ask, whether these things quadrate with one another. For if they
quadrate, how is either the greater? And if they do not quadrate, how
can it be but the one must exceed and the other fall short? For if
neither of these be, the other both will and will not quadrate with
the greater. For those who keep not the common conceptions must of
necessity fall into such perplexities.
40. 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 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.
41. It is also against common sense, that there should be a time
future and past, but no time present; and that _erewhile_ and _lately_
subsist, but _now_ is nothing at all. Yet this often befalls the
Stoics, who admit not the least time between, nor will allow the
present to be indivisible; but whatsoever any one thinks to take and
understand as present, one part of that they say to be future, and
the other part past; so that there is no part remaining or left of
the present time: but of that which is said to be present, one part
is distributed to the future, the other to the past. Therefore one of
these two things follows: either that, holding there was a time and
there will be a time, we must deny there is a time; or we must hold
that there is a time present, part of which has already been and part
will be, and say that of that which now is, one part is future and
the other past; and that of _now_, one part is before and the other
behind; and that _now_ is that which is neither yet now nor any longer
now; for that which is past is no longer _now_, and that which is to
come is not yet _now_. And dividing thus the present, they must needs
say of the year and of the day, that part of it was of the year or day
past, and part will be of the year or day to come; and that of what is
together, there is a part before and a part after. For no less are they
perplexed, confounding together these terms, _not yet_ and _already_
and _no longer_ and _now_ and _not now_. But all other men suppose,
esteem, and think _erewhile_ and _awhile hence_ to be different parts
of time from _now_, which is followed by the one and preceded by the
other. But Archedemus, saying that _now_ is the beginning and juncture
of that which is past and that which is near at hand, has (as it seems)
without perceiving it thereby taken away all time. For if _now_ is no
time, but only a term or extremity of time, and if every part of time
is such as _now_, all time seems to have no parts, but to be wholly
dissolved into terms, joints, and beginnings. But Chrysippus, desiring
to show more artifice in his division, in his book of Vacuity and
some others, says, that the past and future time are not, but have
subsisted (or will subsist), and that the present only is; but in his
third, fourth, and fifth books concerning Parts, he asserts, that of
the present time one part is past, the other to come. Thus it comes to
pass, that he divides subsisting time into non-subsisting parts of a
subsisting total, or rather leaves nothing at all of time subsisting,
if the present has no part but what is either future or past.
42. These men’s conception therefore of time is not unlike the grasping
of water, which, the harder it is held, all the more slides and runs
away. As to actions and motions, all evidence is utterly confounded.
For if _now_ is divided into past and future, it is of necessity that
what is now moved partly has been moved and partly shall be moved, that
the end and beginning of motion have been taken away, that nothing of
any work has been done first, nor shall any thing be last, the actions
being distributed with time. For as they say that of present time, part
is past and part to come; so of that which is doing, it will be said
that part is done and part shall be done. When therefore had _to dine_,
_to write_, _to walk_, a beginning, and when shall they have an end, if
every one who is dining has dined and shall dine, and every one who is
walking has walked and shall walk? But this is, as it is said, of all
absurdities the most absurd, that if he who now lives has already lived
and shall live, then to live neither had beginning nor shall have end;
but every one of us, as it seems, was born without beginning to live,
and shall die without ceasing to live. For if there is no last part,
but he who lives has something of the present still remaining for the
future, to say “Socrates shall live” will never be false so long as it
shall be true to say “Socrates lives;” and so long also will be false
to say “Socrates is dead.” So that, if “Socrates shall live” is true
in infinite parts of time, it will in no part of time be true to say
“Socrates is dead.” And verily what end will there be of a work, and
where will you terminate an action, if, as often as it is true to say
“This is doing,” it is likewise true to say “This shall be doing”? For
he will lie who shall say, there will be an end of Plato’s writing and
disputing; since Plato will never give over writing and disputing, if
it is never false to say of him who disputes that he shall dispute, and
of him who writes that he shall write. Moreover, there will be no part
of that which now is, but either has been or is to be, and is either
past or future; but of what has been and is to be, of past and future,
there is no sense; wherefore there is absolutely no sense of any thing.
For we neither see what is past and future, nor do we hear or have any
other sense of what has been or is to be. Nothing then, even what is
present, is to be perceived by sense, if of the present, part is always
future and part past,—if part has been and part is to be.
43. Now they indeed say, that Epicurus does intolerable things and
violates the conceptions, in moving all bodies with equal celerity, and
admitting none of them to be swifter than another. And yet it is much
more intolerable and farther remote from sense, that nothing can be
overtaken by another:
Not though Adrastus’s swift-footed steed
Should chase the tortoise slow,
as the proverb has it. Now this must of necessity fall out, if things
move according to _prius_ and _posterius_, and the intervals through
which they pass are (as these men’s tenet is) divisible _in infinitum_;
for if the tortoise is but a furlong before the horse, they who divide
this furlong _in infinitum_, and move them both according to _prius_
and _posterius_, will never bring the swiftest to the slowest; the
slower always adding some interval divisible into infinite spaces.
Now to affirm that, water being poured from a bowl or cup, it will
never be all poured out, is it not both against common sense, and a
consequence of what these men say? For no man can understand the motion
according to _prius_ of things infinitely divisible to be consummated;
but leaving always somewhat divisible, it will make all the effusion;
all the running and flux of a liquid, motion of a solid, and fall of an
heavy thing imperfect.
44. I pass by many absurdities of theirs, touching only such as are
against sense. The dispute concerning increase is indeed ancient; for
the question, as Chrysippus says, was put by Epicharmus. Now, whereas
those of the Academy think that the doubt is not very easy and ready
all of a sudden to be cleared, these men have mightily exclaimed
against them, and accused them of taking away the presumptions, and
yet themselves are so far from preserving the common notions, that
they pervert even sense itself. For the discourse is simple, and these
men grant the suppositions,—that all particular substances flow and
are carried, some of them emitting forth somewhat from themselves,
and others receiving things coming from elsewhere; and that the
things to which there is made an accession or from which there is a
decession by numbers and multitudes, do not remain the same, but become
others by the said accessions, the substance receiving a change; and
that these changes are not rightly called by custom increasings or
diminutions, but it is fitter they should be styled generations and
corruptions, because they drive by force from one state to another,
whereas to increase and be diminished are passions of a body that
is subject and permanent. These things being thus in a manner said
and delivered, what would these defenders of evidence and canonical
regulators of common conceptions have? Every one of us (they say) is
double, twin-like, and composed of a double nature; not as the poets
feigned of the Molionidae, that they in some parts grow together
and in some parts are separated,—but every one of us has two bodies,
having the same color, the same figure, the same weight and place....
These things were never before seen by any man; but these men alone
have discerned this composition, doubleness, and ambiguity, how every
one of us is two subjects, the one substance, the other quality; and
the one is in perpetual flux and motion, neither increasing nor being
diminished nor remaining altogether; the other remains and increases
and is diminished, and suffers all things contrary to the former,
with which it is so concorporated, conjoined, and confounded, that it
exhibits not any difference to be perceived by sense. Indeed, Lynceus
is said to have penetrated stones and oaks with his sight; and a
certain man sitting on a watch-tower in Sicily beheld the ships of the
Carthaginians setting forth from their harbor, which was a day and a
night’s sail from thence. Callicrates and Myrmecides are said to have
made chariots that might be covered with the wings of a fly, and to
have engraved verses of Homer on a sesame seed. But none ever discerned
or discovered this diversity in us; nor have we perceived ourselves to
be double, in one part always flowing, and in the other remaining the
same from our birth even to our death. But I make the discourse more
simple, since they make four subjects in every one, or rather every one
of us to be four. But two are sufficient to show their absurdity. For
if, when we hear Pentheus in the tragedy affirm that he sees two suns
and two cities of Thebes,[192] we say that he does not see, but that
his sight is dazzled, he being transported and troubled in his mind;
why do we not bid those farewell, who assert not one city alone, but
all men and animals, and all trees, vessels, instruments, and clothes,
to be double and composed of two, as men who constrain us to dote
rather than to understand? But this feigning other natures of subjects
must perhaps be pardoned them; for there appears no other invention by
which they can maintain and uphold the augmentations of which they are
so fond.
45. But by what cause moved, or for the adorning of what other
suppositions, they frame in a manner innumerable differences and forms
of bodies in the soul, there is none can say, unless it be that they
remove, or rather wholly abdicate and destroy, the common and usual
notions, to introduce other foreign and strange ones. For it is very
absurd that, making all virtues and vices—and with them all arts,
memories, fancies, passions, impulses, and assents—to be bodies,
they should affirm that they neither lie nor subsist in any subject,
leaving them for a place one only hole, like a prick in the heart,
where they crowd the principal part of the soul, enclosed with so many
bodies, that a very great number of them lie hid even from those who
think they can spare and distinguish them one from another. Nay, that
they should not only make them bodies, but also rational creatures,
and even a swarm of such creatures, not friendly or gentle, but a
multitude maliciously rebellious and revengeful, and should so make
of each one of us a park or menagerie or Trojan horse, or whatever
else we may call their fancies,—this is the very height of contempt
and rebellion against evidence and custom. But they say, that not only
the virtues and vices, not only the passions, as anger, envy, grief,
and maliciousness, not only comprehensions, fancies, and ignorances,
not only arts, as shoemaking and working in brass, are animals; but
besides these, also they make even the operations bodies and animals,
saying that walking is an animal, as also dancing, supposing, saluting,
and railing. The consequence of this is that laughing and weeping are
also animals; and if so, then also are coughing, sneezing, groaning,
spitting, blowing the nose, and other such like things sufficiently
known. Neither have they any cause to take it ill that they are by
reason, proceeding leisurely, reduced to this, if they shall call to
mind how Chrysippus, in his First Book of Natural Questions, argues
thus: “Is not night a body? And are not then the evening, dawning, and
midnight bodies? Or is not a day a body? Is not then the first day of
the month a body? And the tenth, the fifteenth, and the thirtieth, are
they not bodies? Is not a month a body? Summer, autumn, and the year,
are they not bodies?”
46. These things they hold against the common conceptions; but those
which follow they hold also against their own, engendering that which
is most hot by refrigeration, and that which is most subtile by
condensation. For the soul, to wit, is a substance most hot and most
subtile. But this they make by the refrigeration and condensation of
the body, changing, as it were, by induration the spirit, which of
vegetative is made animal. Moreover, they say that the sun became
animated, his moisture changing into intellectual fire. Behold how the
sun is imagined to be engendered by refrigeration! Xenophanes indeed,
when one told him that he had seen eels living in hot water, answered,
We will boil them then in cold. But if these men engender heat by
refrigeration and lightness by condensation, it follows, they must also
generate cold things by heat, thick things by dissolution, and heavy
things by rarefaction, that so they may keep some proportion in their
absurdity.
47. And do they not also determine the substance and generation of
conception itself, even against the common conceptions? For conception
is a certain imagination, and imagination an impression in the soul.
Now the nature of the soul is an exhalation, in which it is difficult
for an impression to be made because of its tenuity, and for which
it is impossible to keep an impression it may have received. For its
nutriment and generation, consisting of moist things, have continual
accession and consumption. And the mixture of respiration with the air
always makes some new exhalation, which is altered and changed by the
flux of the air coming from abroad and again going out. For one may
more easily imagine that a stream of running water can retain figures,
impressions, and images, than that a spirit can be carried in vapors
and humors, and continually mingled with another idle and strange
breath from without. But these men so far forget themselves, that,
having defined the conceptions to be certain stored-up intelligences,
and memoirs to be constant and habitual impressions, and having wholly
fixed the sciences, as having stability and firmness, they presently
place under them a basis and seat of a slippery substance, easy to be
dissipated and in perpetual flux and motion.
48. Now the common conception of an element and principle, naturally
imprinted in almost all men, is this, that it is simple, unmixed,
and uncompounded. For that is not an element or principle which is
mixed; but those things are so of which it is mixed. But these men,
making God, who is the principle of all things, to be an intellectual
body and a mind seated in matter, pronounce him to be neither simple
nor uncompounded, but to be composed of and by another; matter being
of itself indeed without reason and void of quality, and yet having
simplicity and the property of a principle. If then God is not
incorporeal and immaterial, he participates of matter as a principle.
For if matter and reason are one and the same thing, they have not
rightly defined matter to be reasonless; but if they are different
things, then is God constituted of them both, and is not a simple, but
compound thing, having to the intellectual taken the corporeal from
matter.
49. Moreover, calling these four bodies, earth, water, air, and fire,
the first elements, they do (I know not how) make some of them simple
and pure, and others compound and mixed. For they hold that earth and
water keep together neither themselves nor other things, but preserve
their unity by the participation of air and force of fire; but that air
and fire do both fortify themselves by their own strength, or being
mixed with the other two, give them force, permanence, and subsistence.
How then is either earth or water an element, if neither of them is
either simple, or first, or self-sufficient, but if each wants somewhat
from without to contain and keep it in its being? For they have not
left so much as a thought of their substance; but this discourse
concerning the earth has much confusion and uncertainty, when they say
that it subsists of itself; for if the earth is of itself, how has it
need of the air to fix and contain it? But neither the earth nor water
can any more be said to be of itself; but the air, drawing together
and thickening the matter, has made the earth, and again dissolving
and mollifying it, has produced the water. Neither of these then is an
element, since something else has contributed being and generation to
them both.
50. Moreover, they say that subsistence and matter are subject to
qualities, and do so in a manner define them; and again, they make the
qualities to be also bodies. But these things have much perplexity.
For if qualities have a peculiar substance, for which they both are
and are called bodies, they need no other substance; for they have
one of their own. But if they have under them in common only that
which the Stoics call essence and matter, it is manifest they do but
participate of the body; for they are not bodies. But the subject and
recipient must of necessity differ from those things which it receives
and to which it is subject. But these men see by halves; for they
say indeed that matter is void of quality, but they will not call
qualities immaterial. Now how can they make a body without quality, who
understand no quality without a body? For the reason which joins a body
to all quality suffers not the understanding to comprehend any body
without some quality. Hither, therefore, he who oppugns incorporeal
quality seems also to oppugn unqualified matter; or separating the one
from the other, he mutually parts them both. As for the reason which
some pretend, that matter is called unqualified not because it is void
of all quality, but because it has all qualities, it is most of all
against sense. For no man calls that unqualified which is capable of
every quality, nor that impassible which is by nature always apt to
suffer all things, nor that immovable which is moved every way. And
this doubt is not solved, that, however matter is always understood
with quality, yet it is understood to be another thing and differing
from quality.