Complete Works of Plutarch Part 6

CHAPTER XVII. HOW BODIES ARE MIXED AND CONTEMPERATED ONE WITH ANOTHER.

The ancient philosophers held that the mixture of elements proceeded from the alteration of qualities; but the disciples of Anaxagoras and Democritus say it is done by apposition. Empedocles composes the elements of still minuter bulks, those which are the most minute and may be termed the element of elements. Plato a.s.signs three bodies (but he will not allow these to be elements, nor properly so called), air, fire, and water, which are mutable into one another; but the earth is mutable into none of these.

CHAPTER XVIII. OF A VACUUM.

All the natural philosophers from Thales to Plato rejected a vacuum.

Empedocles says that there is nothing of a vacuity in Nature, nor anything superabundant. Leucippus, Democritus, Demetrius, Metrodorus, Epicurus, that the atoms are in number infinite; and that a vacuum is infinite in magnitude. The Stoics, that within the compa.s.s of the world there is no vacuum, but beyond it the vacuum is infinite. Aristotle, that the vacuum beyond the world is so great that the heaven has liberty to breathe into it, for the heaven is fiery.

CHAPTER XIX. OF PLACE.

Plato, to define place, calls it that thing which in its own bosom receives forms and ideas; by which metaphor he denotes matter, being (as it were) a nurse or receptacle of beings. Aristotle, that it is the ultimate superficies of the circ.u.mambient body, contiguous to that which it doth encompa.s.s.

CHAPTER XX. OF s.p.a.cE.

The Stoics and Epicureans make a place, a vacuum, and s.p.a.ce to differ.

A vacuum is that which is void of anything that may be called a body; place is that which is possessed by a body; a s.p.a.ce that which is partly filled with a body, as a cask with wine.

CHAPTER XXI. OF TIME.

In the sense of Pythagoras, time is that sphere which encompa.s.ses the world. Plato says that it is a movable image of eternity, or the interval of the world's motion.

Eratosthenes, that it is the solar motion.

CHAPTER XXII. OF THE SUBSTANCE AND NATURE OF TIME.

Plato says that the heavenly motion is time. Most of the Stoics that motion is time. Most philosophers think that time had no commencement; Plato, that time had only in intelligence a beginning.

CHAPTER XXIII. OF MOTION.

Plato and Pythagoras say that motion is a difference and alteration in matter. Aristotle, that it is the actual operation of that which may be moved. Democritus, that there is but one sort of motion, and it is that which is vibratory. Epicurus, that there are two species of motion, one perpendicular, and the other oblique. Herophilus, that one species of motion is obvious only to reason, the other to sense. Herac.l.i.tus utterly denies that there is anything of quiet or repose in nature; for that is the state of the dead; one sort of motion is eternal, which he a.s.signs to beings eternal, the other perishable, to those things which are perishable.

CHAPTER XXIV. OF GENERATION AND CORRUPTION.

Parmenides Melissus, and Zeno deny that there are any such things as generation and corruption, for they suppose that the universe is unmovable. Empedocles, Epicurus, and other philosophers that combine in this, that the world is framed of small corporeal particles meeting together, affirm that corruption and generation are not so properly to be accepted; but there are conjunctions and separations, which do not consist in any distinction according to their qualities, but are made according to quant.i.ty by coalition or disjunction. Pythagoras, and all those who take for granted that matter is subject to mutation, say that generation and corruption are to be accepted in their proper sense, and that they are accomplished by the alteration, mutation, and dissolution of elements.

CHAPTER XXV. OF NECESSITY.

Thales says that necessity is omnipotent, and that it exerciseth an empire over everything. Pythagoras, that the world is invested by necessity. Parmenides and Democritus, that there is nothing in the world but what is necessary, and that this same necessity is otherwise called fate, justice, providence, and the architect of the world.

CHAPTER XXVI. OF THE NATURE OF NECESSITY.

But Plato distinguisheth and refers some things to Providence, others to necessity. Empedocles makes the nature of necessity to be that cause which employs principles and elements. Democritus makes it to be a resistance, impulse, and force of matter. Plato sometimes says that necessity is matter; at other times, that it is the habitude or respect of the efficient cause towards matter.

CHAPTER XXVII. OF DESTINY OR FATE.

Herac.l.i.tus, who attributes all things to fate, makes necessity to be the same thing with it. Plato admits of a necessity in the minds and the acts of men, but yet he introduceth a cause which flows from ourselves.

The Stoics, in this agreeing with Plato, say that necessity is a cause invincible and violent; that fate is the ordered complication of causes, in which there is an intexture of those things which proceed from our own determination, so that certain things are to be attributed to fate, others not.

CHAPTER XXVIII. OF THE NATURE OF FATE.

According to Herac.l.i.tus, the essence of fate is a certain reason which penetrates the substance of all being; and this is an ethereal body, containing in itself that seminal faculty which gives an original to every being in the universe. Plato affirms that it is the eternal reason and the eternal law of the nature of the world. Chrysippus, that it is a spiritual faculty, which in due order doth manage and rule the universe.

Again, in his book styled the "Definitions," that fate is the reason of the world, or that it is that law whereby Providence rules and administers everything that is in the world; or it is that reason by which all things have been, all things are, and all things will be produced. The Stoics say that it is a chain of causes, that is, it is an order and connection of causes which cannot be resisted. Posidonius, that it is a being the third in degree from Jupiter; the first of beings is Jupiter, the second Nature, and the third Fate.

CHAPTER XXIX. OF FORTUNE.

Plato says, that it is an accidental cause and a casual consequence in things which proceed from the election and counsel of men. Aristotle, that it is an accidental cause in those things done by an impulse for a certain end; and this cause is uncertain and unstable: there is a great deal of difference betwixt that which flows from chance and that which falls out by Fortune; for that which is fortuitous allows also chance, and belongs to things practical; but what is by chance cannot be also by Fortune, for it belongs to things without action: Fortune, moreover, pertains to rational beings, but chance to rational and irrational beings alike, and even to inanimate things. Epicurus, that it is a cause not always consistent, but various as to persons, times, and manners.

Anaxagoras and the Stoics, that it is that cause which human reason cannot comprehend; for there are some things which proceed from necessity, some things from Fate, some from choice and free-will, some from Fortune, some from chance.

CHAPTER x.x.x. OF NATURE.

Empedocles affirms that Nature is nothing else but the mixture and separation of the elements; for thus he writes in the first book of his natural philosophy:--

Nature gives neither life nor death, Mutation makes us die or breathe.

The elements first are mixed, then each Do part: this Nature is in mortal speech.

Anaxagoras is of the same opinion, that Nature is coalition and separation, that is, generation and corruption.

BOOK II.