The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

the middle, which
is the cause, namely total failure of heat. Then B is attributed to
C, and A, solidification, to B: ice when B is occurring, has formed
when B has occurred, and will form when B shall occur.
    This sort of cause, then, and its effect come to be
simultaneously when they are in process of becoming, and exist
simultaneously when they actually exist; and the same holds good
when they are past and when they are future. But what of cases
where they are not simultaneous? Can causes and effects different
from one another form, as they seem to us to form, a continuous
succession, a past effect resulting from a past cause different
from itself, a future effect from a future cause different from it,
and an effect which is coming-to-be from a cause different from and
prior to it? Now on this theory it is from the posterior event that
we reason (and this though these later events actually have their
source of origin in previous events—a fact which shows that also
when the effect is coming-to-be we still reason from the posterior
event), and from the event we cannot reason (we cannot argue that
because an event A has occurred, therefore an event B has occurred
subsequently to A but still in the past-and the same holds good if
the occurrence is future)-cannot reason because, be the time
interval definite or indefinite, it will never be possible to infer
that because it is true to say that A occurred, therefore it is
true to say that B, the subsequent event, occurred; for in the
interval between the events, though A has already occurred, the
latter statement will be false. And the same argument applies also
to future events; i.e. one cannot infer from an event which
occurred in the past that a future event will occur. The reason of
this is that the middle must be homogeneous, past when the extremes
are past, future when they are future, coming to be when they are
coming-to-be, actually existent when they are actually existent;
and there cannot be a middle term homogeneous with extremes
respectively past and future. And it is a further difficulty in
this theory that the time interval can be neither indefinite nor
definite, since during it the inference will be false. We have also
to inquire what it is that holds events together so that the
coming-to-be now occurring in actual things follows upon a past
event. It is evident, we may suggest, that a past event and a
present process cannot be ‘contiguous’, for not even two past
events can be ‘contiguous’. For past events are limits and atomic;
so just as points are not ‘contiguous’ neither are past events,
since both are indivisible. For the same reason a past event and a
present process cannot be ‘contiguous’, for the process is
divisible, the event indivisible. Thus the relation of present
process to past event is analogous to that of line to point, since
a process contains an infinity of past events. These questions,
however, must receive a more explicit treatment in our general
theory of change.
    The following must suffice as an account of the manner in which
the middle would be identical with the cause on the supposition
that coming-to-be is a series of consecutive events: for in the
terms of such a series too the middle and major terms must form an
immediate premiss; e.g. we argue that, since C has occurred,
therefore A occurred: and C’s occurrence was posterior, A’s prior;
but C is the source of the inference because it is nearer to the
present moment, and the starting-point of time is the present. We
next argue that, since D has occurred, therefore C occurred. Then
we conclude that, since D has occurred, therefore A must have
occurred; and the cause is C, for since D has occurred C must have
occurred, and since C has occurred A must previously have
occurred.
    If we get our middle term in this way, will the series terminate
in an immediate premiss, or since, as we said, no two events are
‘contiguous’, will a fresh middle term always intervene because
there is an infinity of middles? No: though no two events are
‘contiguous’, yet we must start from a premiss consisting of a
middle and the present event as major. The like is true of future
events too, since if it is true to say that D will exist, it must
be a prior truth to say that A will exist, and the cause of this
conclusion is C; for if D will exist, C will exist prior to D, and
if C will exist, A will exist prior to it. And here too the same
infinite divisibility might be urged,