Page - 314 - in The Complete Aristotle

on the other hand, both parts and whole are found primarily in some single subject, see if that medium is not the same, but one thing in the case of the whole and another in that of the parts. Again, see whether the parts perish together with the whole: for it ought to happen, vice versa, that the whole perishes when the parts perish; when the whole perishes, there is no necessity that the parts should perish too. Or again, see if the whole be good or evil, and the parts neither, or, vice versa, if the parts be good or evil and the whole neither. For it is impossible either for a neutral thing to produce something good or bad, or for things good or bad to produce a neutral thing. Or again, see if the one thing is more distinctly good than the other is evil, and yet the product be no more good than evil, e.g. suppose shamelessness be defined as ‘the product of courage and false opinion’: here the goodness of courage exceeds the evil of false opinion; accordingly the product of these ought to have corresponded to this excess, and to be either good without qualification, or at least more good than evil. Or it may be that this does not necessarily follow, unless each be in itself good or bad; for many things that are productive are not good in themselves, but only in combination; or, per contra, they are good taken singly, and bad or neutral in combination. What has just been said is most clearly illustrated in the case of things that make for health or sickness; for some drugs are such that each taken alone is good, but if they are both administered in a mixture, bad. Again, see whether the whole, as produced from a better and worse, fails to be worse than the better and better than the worse element. This again, however, need not necessarily be the case, unless the elements compounded be in themselves good; if they are not, the whole may very well not be good, as in the cases just instanced. Moreover, see if the whole be synonymous with one of the elements: for it ought not to be, any more than in the case of syllables: for the syllable is not synonymous with any of the letters of which it is made up. Moreover, see if he has failed to state the manner of their composition: for the mere mention of its elements is not enough to make the thing intelligible. For the essence of any compound thing is not merely that it is a product of so- and-so, but that it is a product of them compounded in such and such a way, just as in the case of a house: for here the materials do not make a house irrespective of the way they are put together. If a man has defined an object as ‘A+B’, the first thing to be said is that ‘A+B’ means the same either as ‘A and B’, or as the ‘product of A and B.’ for ‘honey+water’ means either the honey and the water, or the ‘drink made of honey and water’. If, then, he admits that ‘A+B’ is + B’ is the same as either of these two things, the same criticisms will apply as have already been given 314