Seite - 667 - in The Complete Aristotle

magnitude to an actuality of magnitude: for this would be a body’s coming-to- be rather than its growth. We must therefore come to closer quarters with the subject of our inquiry. We must grapple’ with it (as it were) from its beginning, and determine the precise character of the growing and diminishing whose causes we are investigating. It is evident (i) that any and every part of the growing thing has increased, and that similarly in diminution every part has become smaller: also (ii) that a thing grows by the accession, and diminishes by the departure, of something. Hence it must grow by the accession either (a) of something incorporeal or (b) of a body. Now, if (a) it grows by the accession of something incorporeal, there will exist separate a void: but (as we have stated before)’ is impossible for a matter of magnitude to exist ‘separate’. If, on the other hand (b) it grows by the accession of a body, there will be two bodies-that which grows and that which increases it-in the same place: and this too is impossible. But neither is it open to us to say that growth or diminution occurs in the way in which e.g. air is generated from water. For, although the volume has then become greater, the change will not be growth, but a coming to-be of the one-viz. of that into which the change is taking place-and a passing-away of the contrasted body. It is not a growth of either. Nothing grows in the process; unless indeed there be something common to both things (to that which is coming-to-be and to that which passed-away), e.g. ‘body’, and this grows. The water has not grown, nor has the air: but the former has passed-away and the latter has come-to-be, and-if anything has grown-there has been a growth of ‘body.’ Yet this too is impossible. For our account of growth must preserve the characteristics of that which is growing and diminishing. And these characteristics are three: (i) any and every part of the growing magnitude is made bigger (e.g. if flesh grows, every particle of the flesh gets bigger), (ii) by the accession of something, and (iii) in such a way that the growing thing is preserved and persists. For whereas a thing does not persist in the processes of unqualified coming-to-be or passing-away, that which grows or ‘alters’ persists in its identity through the ‘altering’ and through the growing or diminishing, though the quality (in ‘alteration’) and the size (in growth) do not remain the same. Now if the generation of air from water is to be regarded as growth, a thing might grow without the accession (and without the persistence) of anything, and diminish without the departure of anything-and that which grows need not persist. But this characteristic must be preserved: for the growth we are discussing has been assumed to be thus characterized. One might raise a further difficulty. What is ‘that which grows’? Is it that to which something is added? If, e.g. a man grows in his shin, is it the shin 667