26-30. ‘Since, then, white does not come to be if the perfectly . white and in no wise not white existed before, that which becomes white must come from that which is not white; so that it will come from what is not, according to them, unless the same thing was white and not white.’ In the first clause the general sense shows that od goes with yiyverar, not with Aev«dy, and the use of ov, not 7, confirms this interpretation. viv dé yeyevypevov py Aev«dy is not only unmeaning in itself, but spoils the structure of the sentence, since the apodosis should begin with yéyvour’ dv. adore but rarely introduces an apodosis except after a parenthesis. Bz. is therefore right in suggesting that viv...
Xevxov should be excised. These words look like a gloss by a copyist who took od Aevxdy together in 1]. 26. Baz. is also right in suggesting the excision of jy after yyvépevov. An alternative would be to insert pH before Xevxod, where it is read by E (in marg.) T'; but there seems to be no reason why the case of the not-white coming from the not- not-white should be substituted for the simpler case of the white coming from the not-white.
The argument then is:
Nothing can come to be from what is not. The white comes to be from the not-white. Therefore the not-white must also have been white.
ZI. év tois puoikots, Phys. i. 7-9, De Gen. et Corr. 314% 14—319? 5. Aristotle’s answer is that an A which is B comes out of an A which is but is not B, or which is B poientially but not actually.
338—1063* Io answers to 1010 1-26, 1o1I* 31—34.
1063? 6-10. The illusion referred to is produced by pressing the finger against the under part of the eyeball, when a single object is seen as two. The same illusion is referred to in De Somn. 461» 30, Probl. 958% 24. ‘Toexpect this is just like expecting the things which appear to people who put their finger under their eye and make the things appear two instead of one, to be both two because they appear to be two, and again one.’
9. The unintelligible vulgate reading dvo & eivarhas been produced by haplography from the correct vo deity civas preserved in JT. ra pawopeva ... dvo dety eivar is the object of aé:0dv understood.
10. kode. refers not to movement of the eye but to interference with it.
10-17 answers to 1010 25-32.
15. TO Kata Toy Kéopov, the heavenly bodies.
17-21 answers to 1o10® 35—) 1, though only in a very general way.
17-19. There seems to be no parallel in Aristotle for dpa 2 apodos? except after a long protasis (all the instances quoted by Bz., De Zvi. 19°18, De Gen. e¢ Corr. 333 29, 337224, De An. 42529, P. A. 642°13, H. NV. 11346 are of this kind); so that Christ is right in putting a comma after gor. ]. 18 and treating kal xwovpmevdy tu as apodosis.
19, 20. Bz. thinks that Aristotle could not have said ‘the moving thing must be in that out of which it is to move, and not be in it’, without indicating that it is at different times that it will be in it and not in it. He therefore supposes airé to mean that 77/0 which the moving thing moves. It seems impossible, however, to suppose that aire refers to anything different from what éxefvm refers to ; and Bz.’s difficulty is an unreal one. The passage means, as a whole, that motion implies that contradictory predicates can be asserted of the changing thing at different times, but not at the same time. ovvady- OeverOar (1. 21), the reading of A? Al., brings out the point better than the common reading dAnbever Oar.
QI. Td... Kata Thy ayTibaow = Tas dvyTikepevas pacets.
320 Commentary -
22-28 answers to 1010% 22-25,
23. katmep odx dAnOes dv. Aristotle tries to show in Phys. 253> 13- 23 that growth or diminution cannot go on continuously but proceeds by jumps.
27. 7) 8 oveia Kata 73 rowdy, in the sense of roy explained in A. 1020* 33. ‘
28. 16 8€ moody Tis dopictou, the size of things is not definite and unchangeable as some of their qualities are.
28-35 answers to 1008) 12-24,
32. Christ’s reading rod rpocaybévros, which in a note he describes as spurious, is a misprint.
35-> 7 answers to 1009? 38—? 33, but with the references to other philosophers omitted.
8. ék Adyou, ‘on dialectical grounds’. Cf. 1009% 20 daar Adyou xapw Aéyovor, LOTI* 4 THY Tods Adyous TovToUs pdvov AcydvTwr, ib. 15 of év TO Aoyw tHv Biav povov Cytodvtes.
14. ék Tdv eipnpévar, sc. in 1062 20—1063? 7.
17-Ig answers to 1011) 17-22,
19-24 answers, though not closely, to I. 7. rorz1> 23—1012® 24, That chapter proves that there cannot be a middle between contra- dictories ; here the point is that a middle between contraries cannot be asserted of one and the same thing (1. 20), sc. of which one of the contraries is asserted. The proof is: If the same thing is white and neither white nor black, it is white and not white; which breaks the law of contradiction. This is a point not made in TI, though there is a general correspondence with I. 7.
24-35 answers to 10122 24-)18,
24-25. xa’ “Hpdxdertov . .. Méyovtas is to be understood by reference to 1062 31—) 2 (cf. to128 25, 35).
25. kar "Avagaydpav. The view referred to is indicated in ll. 26-30 (cf. 10124 27).
Distinction of theology from mathematics and physics (ch. 7).
1063 36. Every science marks out some genus for itself and studies this, but not gva being; they leave that for another science. These sciences get the essence of their subject by perception or by hypothesis, and try to prove the attributes; it is evident from a review of them that there is no proof of the essence.
1064210. The science of nature is not a productive science, for in such a science the principle of motion is in the producer and not in the product, being an art or other faculty ; nor a pracfical science, since here the motion is in the doer, not in what is done, while physics is
- aaah
SS atta
Ky 6: Fae 5a 22— 7. 1064? 13 321
concerned with things that have a principle of motion in themselves, It is ¢heoretical, therefore.
Ig. Since each science must know the essence of its subjects, we must note how the physicist should define. Should he define as one defines ‘snub’ or as one defines ‘hollow’, i, e. with or without refer- ence to matter? Flesh, eye, &c., must be defined with reference to their matter.
28. Is the science of being as being and as capable of separate existence the same as physics? Physics studies things having a principle of change in themselves; mathematics studies things unchanging but without separate existence. If, then, as we shall try to show, there is a separate unchanging substance, the science of it is different from physics and mathematics, If there is such a substance, here is the divine, and the first and most authoritative principle.
by. There are, then, three kinds of theoretical science, physics, mathematics, theology. Theoretical science is the best kind of science, and of its species the last-named is best, being about the best object.
6. Is the science of being as such universal? There is a universal mathematics as well as the various branches. If physical substances are the primary entities, physics is the first science ; but if there is a substance which is separate and unchangeable, the knowledge of it is prior to physics, and universal because prior.
This chapter answers to E. 1 much more closely than the preceding chapters answer to B and I. It answers the question raised in 1059 26-29.
10642 7. al pev Sv aicOnoews ai 8 broTdpevar, cf. H. rozs’ 11 n.
36. omep metpacdpeba Serxvdvar, cf. A. 6, 7. But see vol. I, xxvii. f.
bg. % Sé kaOddou Kowh wept mdvtwy, cf. B. 10262 25 n.
1g. ka0dhou to mpotépay, cf. E. 10267 23-32 n.
Accidental being and being as truth ; chance (ch. 8).
1064) 15. (1) Let us first examine being in one of its senses—the accidental. The accidental is not studied by any of the traditional sciences; the builder does not ask what will happen to the people who use his house, but studies his own proper end.
23. Nor does any science reason that ‘the musical man who becomes grammatical will be both at the same time, not having been so before; but what is, without always having been, must have come to be ; so that he must have become at the same time musical and gram-
2073-2 Ni
322 Commentary
matical’. It is only sophistic that studies this ; it is the only science of the accidental, and Plato was not far wrong in saying that the sophist spends his time on not-being.
30. That a science of the accidental is not even possible will be clear if we ask what the accidental is. Everything that is is either always and of necessity (logical necessity, not compulsion), or for the most part, or ‘as it happens’ (e.g. cold in the dog-days). The accidental is what happens, but not always nor for the most part, and for that reason there can be no knowledge of it.
1065° 6. There are no causes of the accidental such as there are of the essential ; for then everything would be of necessity. If A is when B is, and B is when C is, and C is of necessity, all the effects down to the last will be necessary, and contingency will have been abolished.
14. Similarly, if the cause be not a being but an event, all events will be necessary ; to-morrow’s eclipse will follow necessarily from something now existent,
21. (2) Being as truth depends on a combination in thought, and there- fore we pass it by and fix our attention on independently existing being ; being as accident is indeterminate and has indeterminate causes.
26. (3) Teleology is found in things happening by nature or as a result of thought. It is chance when some such event happens by accident; chance is an accidental cause of teleological events of the purposive kind. Hence chance and thought are concerned with the same objects; for purpose implies thought. The causes of chance events are indeterminate, and theréfore chance is obscure to human reasoning and is a cause only per accidens. It is good luck or bad luck when it turns out well or ill; prosperity and adversity are good and bad luck on a large scale. Since nothing accidental is prior to the essential, if chance is a cause of the universe reason and nature are prior causes.
1064) 15—1065* 26 answers roughly to EB. 2-4, omitting
(1) the account of the various senses of ‘ being’ in B. 1026 34—? 2,
(2) the statement that accidents are neither generated nor destroyed, 1026> 22-24,
(3) the examples given in 1026 35—10279 5, 10278 23-26,
(4) the reference of the cause of accidents to matter, 10279 13-15,
(5) the discussion of being as truth in E. 4 (just touched on in 10652 21-24).
23. It seems best to excise o48€ povotkdy Kal ypappatiKdy, which is omitted in Alexander and was probably inserted by a reader who wished to indicate briefly the sophistical question mentioned in the corresponding passage of E—zérepov érepov 7) TadTov povatKov Kal ypap- parixov (E. 1026>16, where see n.). od8& povorkdy Kai ypapparikdy will not stand by itself, and if these words be retained we must intro- duce after odé either ei with Bz., 76 with Christ, or (best) ei 76 with Bullinger.
23-26. o08€ tév dvTa... ypappatiKds. The sophistical argument here given is somewhat different from that in E. 1026 18-20. The argu- ment is:
A man who being musical becomes grammatical will be both at once, not having been so before.
But that which is, but bas not always been, must have come to be.
Therefore such a man at the same time came to be musical and grammatical,—which ex hypothes? he did not.
The fallacy evidently lies in the supposition that because he must have come to be simultaneously ‘ musical and grammatical’, he must have simultaneously come to be musical and come to be gram- matical; dua is ‘conjoined’ with a word to which it does not really belong. The compiler has thus replaced the fallacy in E. 1026> 18— 20 7 instance of the familiar fallacy of cvvOeors (Soph. El. 166% 23-32).
26. Bz. brackets 8é, and as an alternative suggests 67. But dé is justified by the passages quoted in Bz. /udex 167% 24-34.
29-30. fiddtwv .. . SiarpiPew, Soph. 237 A, 254A.
34. 4 xpapeOa ev tois Kata Tas dmodetgers, ie. Hy Acyomey TH py evdéxerOar ddAws, E. 1026> 29.