Page - 468 - in The Complete Aristotle

of the two. For as the same matter becomes hot from being cold, and cold from being hot, because it was potentially both, so too from hot it can become more hot, though nothing in the matter has become hot that was not hot when the thing was less hot; just as, if the arc or curve of a greater circle becomes that of a smaller, whether it remains the same or becomes a different curve, convexity has not come to exist in anything that was not convex but straight (for differences of degree do not depend on an intermission of the quality); nor can we get any portion of a flame, in which both heat and whiteness are not present. So too, then, is the earlier heat related to the later. So that the greatness and smallness, also, of the sensible volume are extended, not by the matter’s acquiring anything new, but because the matter is potentially matter for both states; so that the same thing is dense and rare, and the two qualities have one matter. The dense is heavy, and the rare is light. [Again, as the arc of a circle when contracted into a smaller space does not acquire a new part which is convex, but what was there has been contracted; and as any part of fire that one takes will be hot; so, too, it is all a question of contraction and expansion of the same matter.] There are two types in each case, both in the dense and in the rare; for both the heavy and the hard are thought to be dense, and contrariwise both the light and the soft are rare; and weight and hardness fail to coincide in the case of lead and iron. From what has been said it is evident, then, that void does not exist either separate (either absolutely separate or as a separate element in the rare) or potentially, unless one is willing to call the condition of movement void, whatever it may be. At that rate the matter of the heavy and the light, qua matter of them, would be the void; for the dense and the rare are productive of locomotion in virtue of this contrariety, and in virtue of their hardness and softness productive of passivity and impassivity, i.e. not of locomotion but rather of qualitative change. So much, then, for the discussion of the void, and of the sense in which it exists and the sense in which it does not exist. < div id=“section36” class=“section” title=“10”> 10 Next for discussion after the subjects mentioned is Time. The best plan will be to begin by working out the difficulties connected with it, making use of 468