The Complete Aristotle (eng.)
either towards the middle or upwards,
and the infinite either the whole or the half of it-cannot do
either; for how will you divide it? Or how will part of the
infinite be down and part up, or part extreme and part middle?
Further, every sensible body is in a place, and there are six kinds
of place, but these cannot exist in an infinite body. In general,
if there cannot be an infinite place, there cannot be an infinite
body; (and there cannot be an infinite place,) for that which is in
a place is somewhere, and this means either up or down or in one of
the other directions, and each of these is a limit.
The infinite is not the same in the sense that it is a single
thing whether exhibited in distance or in movement or in time, but
the posterior among these is called infinite in virtue of its
relation to the prior; i.e. a movement is called infinite in virtue
of the distance covered by the spatial movement or alteration or
growth, and a time is called infinite because of the movement which
occupies it.
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11
Of things which change, some change in an accidental sense, like
that in which ‘the musical’ may be said to walk, and others are
said, without qualification, to change, because something in them
changes, i.e. the things that change in parts; the body becomes
healthy, because the eye does. But there is something which is by
its own nature moved directly, and this is the essentially movable.
The same distinction is found in the case of the mover; for it
causes movement either in an accidental sense or in respect of a
part of itself or essentially. There is something that directly
causes movement; and there is something that is moved, also the
time in which it is moved, and that from which and that into which
it is moved. But the forms and the affections and the place, which
are the terminals of the movement of moving things, are unmovable,
e.g. knowledge or heat; it is not heat that is a movement, but
heating. Change which is not accidental is found not in all things,
but between contraries, and their intermediates, and between
contradictories. We may convince ourselves of this by
induction.
That which changes changes either from positive into positive,
or from negative into negative, or from positive into negative, or
from negative into positive. (By positive I mean that which is
expressed by an affirmative term.) Therefore there must be three
changes; that from negative into negative is not change, because
(since the terms are neither contraries nor contradictories) there
is no opposition. The change from the negative into the positive
which is its contradictory is generation-absolute change absolute
generation, and partial change partial generation; and the change
from positive to negative is destruction-absolute change absolute
destruction, and partial change partial destruction. If, then,
‘that which is not’ has several senses, and movement can attach
neither to that which implies putting together or separating, nor
to that which implies potency and is opposed to that which is in
the full sense (true, the not-white or not-good can be moved
incidentally, for the not-white might be a man; but that which is
not a particular thing at all can in no wise be moved), that which
is not cannot be moved (and if this is so, generation cannot be
movement; for that which is not is generated; for even if we admit
to the full that its generation is accidental, yet it is true to
say that ‘not-being’ is predicable of that which is generated
absolutely). Similarly rest cannot be long to that which is not.
These consequences, then, turn out to be awkward, and also this,
that everything that is moved is in a place, but that which is not
is not in a place; for then it would be somewhere. Nor is
destruction movement; for the contrary of movement is rest, but the
contrary of destruction is generation. Since every movement is a
change, and the kinds of change are the three named above, and of
these those in the way of generation and destruction are not
movements, and these are the changes from a thing to its
contradictory, it follows that only the change from positive into
positive is movement. And the positives are either contrary or
intermediate (for even privation must be regarded as contrary), and
are expressed by an affirmative term, e.g. ‘naked’ or ‘toothless’
or ‘black’.
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12
If the categories are
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