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Book I Chapter 19

Chapter 19: Motion

On motion.⁵²³

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Pythagoras

Of Pythagoras. Motion is difference or otherness in matter, insofar as it is matter. This is a common definition of every kind of motion.⁵²⁴

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Kinds of motion

Democritus declared that there is one kind of motion, motion by vibration. Epicurus distinguished two kinds, motion along a plumb line and motion by a swerve.⁵²⁵ Some introduce a fourth kind as well, motion in respect of substance, that is, coming into being. Others add intellectual motion too, carrying the number up to five.⁵²⁶

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Diodorus and Heraclitus

Diodorus Cronus held that something has moved, but nothing is moving.⁵²⁷

Heraclitus excluded rest and stillness from the universe, assigning motion to all things.

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Reason and perception

Herophilus distinguished motion apprehended by reason from motion apprehended by the senses.

Asclepiades declared that all motion is perceptible.⁵²⁸

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Aristotle on actuality

Aristotle held that motion is the actuality of what is potentially movable, insofar as it is movable.⁵²⁹ Some motions concern quantity, others quality, and others place. In quantity there are increase and decrease, observed in some addition and subtraction; in quality, alteration and change, as from hot to cold or sweet to bitter; and in place, the motion he more specifically called locomotion, in which moving things pass from one place to another.⁵³⁰

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Paths and elements

There are three varieties of locomotion, two simple, straight and circular, and one mixed. Motion ⟨along⟩ a straight line is upward or downward according to the lightness or weight of bodies; circular motion goes round; mixed motion is oblique.⁵³¹ Locomotion proceeds either away from the center, toward the center, or around the center: fire and air move away from it, earth and water toward it, and the fifth [whole] around it. With these the entire world is filled.⁵³²

2 Hermes: What makes motion possible

From Hermes, from the discourse addressed to Asclepius.⁵³³

⟨Hermes⟩ Everything that moves moves in something stationary, not in something moving. And what imparts motion is itself stationary, being unable to move together with what it moves.

⟨Asclepius⟩ How, then, Trismegistus, do things here move together with moving things? For you said that the wandering spheres are moved by the sphere of the fixed stars.⁵³⁴

2 Hermes: Opposed motions

⟨Hermes⟩ This, Asclepius, is not joint motion but countermotion: the spheres do not move alike, but in opposition to one another. Their opposition keeps the resistance to their motion stationary, for resistance brings locomotion to a standstill. Thus the wandering spheres, moved in opposition to one another by the sphere of the fixed stars, are moved by opposition itself, through their contrary encounter, around that opposition which itself stands still.⁵³⁵

2 Hermes: The Bears

For those Bears you see neither setting nor rising, but turning about the same point: do you think they move or stand still?

⟨Asclepius⟩ They move, Trismegistus.

⟨Hermes⟩ With what sort of motion, Asclepius?

⟨Asclepius⟩ Motion that turns around the same point.

⟨Hermes⟩ Revolution is motion around the same point, held in place by stillness. For going around it prevents going beyond it. So too the opposed motion stands firm, supported by the opposition.⁵³⁶

2 Hermes: The swimmer

I will give you an earthly example visible to your eyes. Consider land animals swimming: a human being, for instance. As the water flows, the resistance of the feet and hands provides the person with stability, preventing them from being swept along with the water.

⟨Asclepius⟩ The example is clear, Trismegistus.⁵³⁷

2 Hermes: Motion from within

⟨Hermes⟩ All motion, then, takes place in stillness and through stillness. Accordingly, the motion of the world and of every material living creature is brought about not by things outside [the world], but by things within [toward the outside], intelligible things: soul or breath or some other incorporeal thing.⁵³⁸ For a body does not move an ensouled ⟨body⟩, nor indeed any body at all, even if it is without soul.⁵³⁹

2 Hermes: The carrier and the burden

⟨Asclepius⟩ What do you mean, Trismegistus? In the case of wood, stones, and all ⟨other⟩ things without soul, are not bodies ⟨what moves them⟩?

⟨Hermes⟩ By no means, ⟨O⟩ Asclepius. For what is within the moving body, the ensouled principle, is no body: it is what moves both bodies, that of the carrier and that of the thing carried.⁵⁴⁰ Hence a thing without soul will not move a thing without soul. You see, then, how the soul is weighed down when it ⟨alone⟩ carries two bodies.

3 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Chrysippus

Of Chrysippus. Chrysippus says that motion is a change of place, of a whole or a part; or a shift from a place, either as a whole or in part. Again, motion is a change in place or shape; locomotion is a rapid motion aloft.⁵⁴¹ Rest may be, as it were, a body’s immobility, or a body’s disposition remaining the same and in the same manner now as before.⁵⁴²

3 Chrysippus: Primary motions

Motion and rest are spoken of in many senses, and for that reason many definitions are given, according to each meaning. There are two primary motions, straight and curved; from their combinations in different ways arise many distinct motions.⁵⁴³

523.Kinēsis can include alteration and growth as well as movement from place to place. “Motion” is retained as the chapter’s governing term; individual extracts specify its extent. Phora is usually rendered “locomotion” where it is distinguished from other changes.

524.The heading attributes this definition to Pythagoras; it does not establish that these are his own words. “Insofar as” preserves the qualification attached to matter. Wachsmuth supplies the attribution of the collected report to Aëtius.

525.Palmos is a shaking or vibration; the printed text retains it rather than the proposed reading “blow” or “impact.” The plumb line gives the image of straight motion, while parenklisis denotes a deviation or swerve.

526.The jump to “fourth” is in the source. Wachsmuth explains the count by taking Democritus’s kind as the first and Epicurus’s two as the next two; another proposal assumes that a third kind has dropped out. No missing item is silently supplied here. “Intellectual” renders dianoētikē.

527.The paradox turns on the Greek tenses: the perfect kekinēsthai presents motion as accomplished, while the present kineisthai presents it as occurring. The report gives the claim without the argument for it.

528.Logōi theōrētē contrasts rational apprehension with sense perception. These compressed reports distinguish ways in which motion is known; they do not supply a further list of bodily movements.

529.The qualification “insofar as it is movable” belongs to the definition: motion is the exercise of a capacity for change. The wording is repaired in the base edition with reference to Physics III.2, 202a8. Wachsmuth suggests that this Aristotelian portion of excerpt 1 may derive from Arius Didymus.

530.The reference printed with “locomotion” is Physics VIII.7, 260a28. The distinction among quantity, quality, and place explains why the chapter’s “motion” is broader than a change of location.

531.The preposition “along” is supplied in the Greek. “Oblique” follows Canter’s correction kat’ enklisin. It describes the mixed path in this account; it is not the parenklisis, or swerve, mentioned in the report on Epicurus.

532.“The fifth” is the fifth elemental body, placed beside earth, water, air, and fire. Wachsmuth adopts Usener’s repair tou pemptou and brackets holou, “whole,” as rejected wording. Omit the bracketed word in a continuous reading.

533.The extract corresponds to Corpus Hermeticum II.6-9, between the passages collected in chapter 18. The speaker labels are supplied by Wachsmuth using the separate Hermetic tradition. Trismegistus means “thrice greatest.”

534.The “wandering” spheres are those of the planets, distinguished from the sphere of the fixed stars. “Fixed” describes the stars’ relation to one another, not an absence of motion in their sphere. The dialogue itself immediately asks how motion can depend on what is stationary.

535.The last sentence is textually and syntactically difficult. Wachsmuth alters the relations among the spheres to “one another, by the fixed sphere”; the separately transmitted Hermetic text has different wording. This translation takes the final pronouns as referring to “opposition,” retaining the argument that opposed motions depend on a stable resistance. It does not resolve the sentence into a more precise astronomical mechanism.

536.The Bears are the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, described here as circling without rising or setting. The argument locates stability in a circular course’s fixed reference point and bounds. Its pairing of motion with stillness continues the preceding claim about opposition.

537.Antitypia, “resistance,” repeats the term used in the account of the spheres. The swimmer’s stasis is stability against the current. Wachsmuth prints “land animals” from the parallel Hermetic text in place of the manuscripts’ “mortal animals.”

538.The two bracketed phrases are rejected in the base edition; omit them in a continuous reading. “Intelligible” means apprehended by thought. Here pneuma, “breath,” is placed among incorporeal causes; this particular account should not be assimilated to the Stoic accounts of bodily pneuma elsewhere in the collection.

539.Wachsmuth supplies the second “body” from the Hermetic tradition. To synolon is taken adverbially, “at all,” so that the denial extends from ensouled bodies to bodies without soul. The following exchange tests this denial through the familiar act of carrying an object.

540.“The ensouled principle” renders to empsychon, Wachsmuth’s correction of to apsychon, “the soulless.” The distinction is between the inner source of motion and the two bodies it moves. The bracketed supplements clarify the question and the soul’s bearing the load. The extract ends here without adding the conclusion transmitted in the longer Hermetic text.

541.The unusual qualification “aloft” follows the printed meteōron, a correction of meteōrou. The alternative proposal “from above” is recorded in the apparatus but not adopted. This definition of phora is more restricted than the general use of “locomotion” in the preceding Aristotelian report.

542.Monē is remaining or rest; schesis is a disposition or the way a body is held. The report expressly offers more than one definition, as the next sentences explain. The attribution to Arius Didymus is supplied by the editor (physical fragment 22 in Diels).

543.Kampylē means curved, a broader term than circular. The multiplicity of motions is explained through combinations of two primary paths; this is separate from the preceding observation that the words “motion” and “rest” have several meanings.