The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (49 page)

2
     We may distinguish generally between predicating B of A because it (A) is itself, and because it is something else; and particularly between place which is common and in which all bodies are, and the special place occupied primarily by each. I mean, for instance, that you are now in the heavens because you are in the air and it is in the heavens; and you are in the air because you are on the earth; and similarly on the earth because you are in this place which contains no more than you.
(35)

Now if place is what
primarily
contains each body, it would be a
limit, so that the place would be the form or shape of each body by which the magnitude or the matter of the magnitude is defined: for this is the limit of each body.
[209b]

If,
(5)
then, we look at the question in this way the place of a thing is its form. But, if we regard the place as the
extension
of the magnitude, it is the matter. For this is different from the magnitude: it is what is contained and defined by the form, as by a bounding plane. Matter or the indeterminate is of this nature; when the boundary and attributes of a sphere are taken away,
(10)
nothing but the matter is left.

This is why Plato in the
Timaeus
¹
says that matter and space are the same; for the ‘participant’ and space are identical. (It is true, indeed, that the account he gives there of the ‘participant’ is different from what he says in his so-called ‘unwritten teaching’.
²
(15)
Nevertheless, he did identify place and space.) I mention Plato because, while all hold place to be something, he alone tried to say
what
it is.

In view of these facts we should naturally expect to find difficulty in determining what place is, if indeed it
is
one of these two things,
(20)
matter or form. They demand a very close scrutiny, especially as it is not easy to recognize them apart.

But it is at any rate not difficult to see that place cannot be either of them. The form and the matter are not separate from the thing, whereas the place can be separated. As we pointed out,
³
where air was,
(25)
water in turn comes to be, the one replacing the other; and similarly with other bodies. Hence the place of a thing is neither a part nor a state of it, but is separable from it. For place is supposed to be something like a vessel—the vessel being a transportable place. But the vessel is no part of the thing.

In so far then as it is separable from the thing,
(30)
it is not the form:
qua
containing, it is different from the matter.

Also it is held that what is anywhere is both itself something and that there is a different thing outside it.
⁴
(Plato of course, if we may digress, ought to tell us why the form and the numbers are not in place,
(35)
if ‘what participates’ is place—whether what participates is the Great and the Small or the matter, as he called it in writing in the
Timaeus
.)
[210a]

Further, how could a body be carried to its own place, if place was the matter or the form? It is impossible that what has no reference to motion or the distinction of up and down can be place. So place
must be looked for among things which have these characteristics.

If the place is in the thing (it must be if it is either shape or matter) place will have a place: for both the form and the indeterminate undergo change and motion along with the thing,
(5)
and are not always in the same place, but are where the thing is. Hence the place will have a place.

Further, when water is produced from air, the place has been destroyed, for the resulting body is not in the same place.
(10)
What sort of destruction then is that?

This concludes my statement of the reasons why space must be something, and again of the difficulties that may be raised about its essential nature.

3
     The next step we must take is to see in how many senses one thing is said to be ‘in’ another.

One might raise the question whether a thing can be in itself,
(25)
or whether nothing can be in itself—everything being either
no
where or in something
else.

The question is ambiguous; we may mean the thing
qua
itself or
qua
something else.

When there are parts of a whole—the one that in which a thing is, the other the thing which is in it—the whole will be described as being in itself. For a thing is described in terms of its parts, as well as in terms of the thing as a whole, e. g. a man is said to be white because the visible surface of him is white, or to be scientific because his thinking faculty has been trained. The jar then will not be in itself and the wine will not be in itself.
(30)
But the jar of wine will: for
the contents and the container are both parts of the same whole.

In this sense then, but not primarily, a thing can be in itself, namely, as ‘white’ is in body (for the visible surface is in body), and science is in the mind.

[210b]
It is from these, which are ‘parts’ (in the sense at least of being ‘in’ the man), that the man is called white, &c. But the jar and the wine in separation are not parts of a whole, though together they are. So when there are parts, a thing will be in itself, as ‘white’ is in man because it is in body, and in body because it resides in the visible surface.
(5)
We cannot go further and say that it is in surface in virtue of something other than itself. (Yet it is not in itself: though these are in a way the same thing,) they differ in essence, each having a special nature and capacity, ‘surface’ and ‘white’.

Thus if we look at the matter inductively we do not find anything to be ‘in’ itself in any of the senses that have been distinguished; and it can be seen by argument that it is impossible.
(10)
For each of two things will have to be both, e. g. the jar will have to be both vessel and wine, and the wine both wine and jar, if it is possible for a thing to be in itself; so that, however true it might be that they were in each other, the jar will receive the wine in virtue not of
its
being wine but of the wine’s being wine,
(15)
and the wine will be in the jar in virtue not of
its
being a jar but of the jar’s being a jar. Now that they are different in respect of their essence is evident; for ‘that in which something is’ and ‘that which is in it’ would be differently defined.

Nor is it possible for a thing to be in itself even incidentally: for two things would be at the same time in the same thing.
(20)
The jar would be in itself—if a thing whose nature it is to receive can be in itself; and that which it receives, namely (if wine) wine, will be in it. Obviously then a thing cannot be in itself
primarily.

Zeno’s problem—that if Place is something it must be in something—is not difficult to solve. There is nothing to prevent the first place from being ‘in’ something else—not indeed in that as ‘in’ place,
(25)
but as health is ‘in’ the hot as a positive determination of it or as the hot is ‘in’ body as an affection. So we escape the infinite regress.

Another thing is plain: since the vessel is no part of what is in it (what contains in the
strict
sense is different from what is contained), place could not be either the matter or the form of the thing contained,
(30)
but must be different—for the latter, both the matter and the shape, are parts of what is contained.

This then may serve as a critical statement of the difficulties involved.

4
     What then after all is place? The answer to this question may be elucidated as follows.

Let us take for granted about it the various characteristics which are supposed correctly to belong to it essentially. We assume then—

In addition:

Having laid these foundations, we must complete the theory. We ought to try to make our investigation such as will render an account of place, and will not only solve the difficulties connected with it, but will also show that the attributes supposed to belong to it do really belong to it, and further will make clear the cause of the trouble and of the difficulties about it.
(10)
Such is the most satisfactory kind of exposition.

First then we must understand that place would not have been thought of, if there had not been a special kind of motion, namely that with respect to place. It is chiefly for this reason that we suppose the heaven also to be in place, because it is in constant movement. Of this kind of change there are two species—locomotion on the one hand and,
(15)
on the other, increase and diminution. For these too involve variation of place: what was then in this place has now in turn changed to what is larger or smaller.

Again, when we say a thing is ‘moved’, the predicate either (1) belongs to it actually, in virtue of its own nature, or (2) in virtue of something conjoined with it. In the latter case it may be either (
a
) something which by its own nature is capable of being moved,
(20)
e. g. the parts of the body or the nail in the ship, or (
b
) something which is not in itself capable of being moved, but is
always
moved through its conjunction with something else, as ‘whiteness’ or ‘science’. These have changed their place only because the subjects to which they belong do so.

We say that a thing is in the world, in the sense of in place, because it is in the air, and the air is in the world; and when we say it is in the air,
(25)
we do not mean it is in every part of the air, but that it is in the
air because of the outer surface of the air which surrounds it; for if all the air were its place, the place of a thing would not be equal to the thing—which it is supposed to be, and which the primary place in which a thing is actually is.

When what surrounds, then, is not separate from the thing,
(30)
but is in continuity with it, the thing is said to be in what surrounds it, not in the sense of in place, but as a part in a whole. But when the thing is separate and in contact, it is immediately ‘in’ the inner surface of the surrounding body, and this surface is neither a part of what is in it nor yet greater than its extension, but equal to it; for the extremities of things which touch are coincident.

Further, if one body is in continuity with another,
(35)
it is not moved
in
that but
with
that. On the other hand it is moved
in
that if it is separate. It makes no difference whether what contains is moved or not.

[211b]
Again, when it is not separate it is described as a part in a whole, as the pupil in the eye or the hand in the body: when it is separate, as the water in the cask or the wine in the jar. For the hand is moved
with
the body and the water
in
the cask.

It will now be plain from these considerations what place is.
(5)
There are just four things of which place must be one—the shape, or the matter, or some sort of extension between the bounding surfaces of the containing body, or this boundary itself if it contains no extension over and above the bulk of the body which comes to be in it.

Three of these it obviously cannot be:

(1) The shape is supposed to be place because it surrounds,
(10)
for the extremities of what contains and of what is contained are coincident. Both the shape and the place, it is true, are boundaries. But not of the same thing: the form is the boundary of the thing, the place is the boundary of the body which contains it.

(2) The extension between the extremities is thought to be something, because what is contained and separate may often be changed while the container remains the same (as water may be poured from a vessel)—the assumption being that the extension is something over and above the body displaced.
(15)
But there is no such extension. One of the bodies which change places and are naturally capable of being in contact with the container falls in—whichever it may chance to be.

If there were an extension which were such as to exist independently and be permanent,
(20)
there would be an infinity of places in the same thing. For when the water and the air change places, all the portions of the two together will play the same part in the whole which was
previously played by all the water in the vessel; at the same time the place too will be undergoing change; so that there will be another place which is the place of the place, and many places will be coincident.
(25)
There is not a different place of the part, in which it is moved, when the whole vessel changes its place: it is always the same: for it is in the (proximate) place where they are that the air and the water (or the parts of the water) succeed each other, not in that place in which they come to be, which is part of the place which is the place of the whole world.

(3) The matter, too, might seem to be place, at least if we consider it in what is at rest and is thus separate but in continuity.
(30)
For just as in change of quality there is something which was formerly black and is now white, or formerly soft and now hard—this is just why we say that the matter exists—so place, because it presents a similar phenomenon, is thought to exist—only in the one case we say so because
what
was air is now water,
(35)
in the other because
where
air formerly was there is now water.
[212a]
But the matter, as we said before,
⁵
is neither separable from the thing nor contains it, whereas place has both characteristics.

Well, then, if place is none of the three—neither the form nor the matter nor an extension which is always there, different from, and over and above, the extension of the thing which is displaced—place necessarily is the one of the four which is left, namely,
(5)
the boundary of the containing body at which it is in contact with the contained body. (By the contained body is meant what can be moved by way of locomotion.)

Place is thought to be something important and hard to grasp, both because the matter and the shape present themselves along with it, and because the displacement of the body that is moved takes place in a stationary container, for it seems possible that there should be an interval which is other than the bodies which are moved.
(10)
The air, too, which is thought to be incorporeal, contributes something to the belief: it is not only the boundaries of the vessel which seem to be place, but also what is between them, regarded as empty. Just, in fact, as the vessel is transportable place, so place is a non-portable vessel. So when what is within a thing which is moved, is moved and changes its place,
(15)
as a boat on a river, what contains plays the part of a vessel rather than that of place. Place on the other hand is rather what is motionless: so it is rather the whole river that is place, because as a whole it is motionless.

Hence we conclude that
the innermost motionless boundary of what contains is place.
(20)

This explains why the middle of the heaven and the surface which faces us of the rotating system are held to be ‘up’ and ‘down’ in the strict and fullest sense for all men: for the one is always at rest, while the inner side of the rotating body remains always coincident with itself.
(25)
Hence since the light is what is naturally carried up, and the heavy what is carried down, the boundary which contains in the direction of the middle of the universe, and the middle itself, are down, and that which contains in the direction of the outermost part of the universe, and the outermost part itself, are up.

For this reason, too, place is thought to be a kind of surface, and as it were a vessel, i. e. a container of the thing.

Further,
(30)
place is coincident with the thing, for boundaries are coincident with the bounded.