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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 41

4.2 · The conditions of bodily existence

These share in one another through a kinship of nature, since body needed a place - for a body could not be constituted without place - and changes naturally. Yet change is impossible without time and movement according to nature, and a body cannot be constituted without harmony. Place therefore exists for the sake of body: by receiving the body’s changes, it prevents what changes from being destroyed.¹⁰⁹²

4.3 · Change of condition

As it changes, it passes from one thing into another and loses its condition, but not its existence as a constituted body. When it has changed into something else, it has that other thing’s condition. For body, insofar as it is body, remains body; its particular disposition does not remain. Body therefore changes in disposition.¹⁰⁹³

4.4 · The distinctive properties

Place, time, and natural motion are therefore incorporeal. Each has its own distinctive property. The property of place is enclosure; of time, interval and number; of nature, motion; of harmony, friendship; of body, change. The property of soul is thinking in accordance with its essence.¹⁰⁹⁴

5.1 · Archytas: what is immediately evident

From Archytas, On Principles.

The starting point of knowledge of things that exist is what is immediately evident. Of things immediately evident, some are intelligible and others perceptible: the intelligible are unmoving, the perceptible moving. The criterion of the intelligible is intellect, and that of the perceptible is sense-perception. Of things not immediately evident, some are objects of knowledge and others of opinion: the unmoving are objects of knowledge, the moving of opinion.¹⁰⁹⁵

5.2 · Judge, account, and standard

We must understand these three: what judges, what is judged, and the standard against which it is judged. What judges is intellect and sense-perception; what is judged is the account; the standard against which it is judged is what is immediately evident, either intelligible or perceptible. Intellect judges the account by comparing it now with the intelligible, now with the perceptible. For when the account investigates intelligible things, it makes the comparison with the intelligible; when perceptible things, with the perceptible.¹⁰⁹⁶

5.3 · Mathematical and audible harmony

For this reason, false constructions in geometry become apparent through figures and numbers, while causal and probable accounts in natural and political inquiry become apparent through generation and actions. Reason knows that the octave is in a double ratio by comparing it with the intelligible [ratio]; that the double ratio sounds concordant is confirmed by sense-perception.¹⁰⁹⁷

5.4 · Mechanics and demonstration

The accounts used by practitioners of mechanics likewise compare figures, numbers, and proportions with intelligible things, but their results with perceptible things; for these results are considered together with matter and motion. In general, it is impossible to know the reason why in each case without first knowing what the thing is. What each ⟨of⟩ the existing things is is judged by intellect; that it exists, or that it is so, by argument and sense-perception: by argument when we indicate a demonstration of something through an inference, the fact obtaining necessarily; by perception when we confirm the argument through sense-perception.¹⁰⁹⁸

6.1 · Hermes and Tat: animals and skill

From Hermes, from the writings To Tat.

⟨TAT⟩ You have demonstrated this correctly, father; but teach me this further point. You said, I believe, that knowledge and skill are an activity of the rational faculty. Yet now you say that irrational animals are and are called irrational because they lack that faculty. ⟨And⟩ it is clear that, on this account, irrational animals necessarily have no share in knowledge or skill, since they lack the rational faculty.

⟨HERMES⟩ Necessarily, my child.

⟨TAT⟩ Why, then, father, do we see some irrational animals employing knowledge and skill, such as ants storing their winter food, flying creatures likewise building nests for themselves, and quadrupeds recognizing their own dens?¹⁰⁹⁹

6.2 · Nature and what is learned

⟨HERMES⟩ They do these things, my child, by nature, not by knowledge or skill. Knowledge and skill can be taught; none of these irrational creatures is taught anything. Things that occur by nature arise through a general activity, while those that arise through knowledge and skill come to particular individuals, not to all. ⟨What occurs in all⟩ is brought about by nature. For example, ⟨all⟩ human beings look upward, but not all are musicians, archers, or hunters, or practice every other pursuit. Some of them have learned something through the activity of knowledge and skill.¹¹⁰⁰

6.3 · The example of ants

In the same way, if some ants did this and others did not, you would rightly say that they did it by knowledge and gathered their food by skill. But if all alike are led to it by nature, even without willing it, clearly they do not do it by knowledge or skill.¹¹⁰¹

6.4 · Incorporeal activities in bodies

For activities, Tat, although themselves incorporeal, are in bodies and act through bodies. Accordingly, insofar as they are incorporeal, I say that they are immortal; insofar as they cannot act without bodies, I say that they are always in a body. Things that have come to be in relation to something or for some purpose, subject to providence and necessity, can never remain idle in respect of their own activity.¹¹⁰²

6.5 · The continual formation of bodies

For what is will always be: its body and life are the same. It follows from this argument that bodies, too, always exist. That is why I say that embodiment itself is an everlasting activity. For if earthly bodies are dissoluble, yet bodies must exist as places and instruments of activities, while activities are immortal and the immortal always exists, the formation of bodies is itself an activity, since it always exists.¹¹⁰³

6.6 · Activities and the growing soul

They accompany the soul, but do not arrive all at once. Some act as soon as a human being comes to be, being present with the soul in its irrational part; the purer activities cooperate with the soul’s rational part as age advances. These activities are attached to bodies. From divine bodies they come into mortal ones, [the] activities forming bodies, and each acts upon either the body or the soul.¹¹⁰⁴

6.7 · Soul and body can part

Yet they also associate with the soul itself apart from body. Activities always exist, but the soul is not always in a mortal body: it can exist apart from the body, whereas activities cannot exist apart from bodies. This is a sacred teaching, my child. A body cannot be constituted without soul, but it can exist without it.

⟨TAT⟩ What do you mean by that, father?¹¹⁰⁵

1092.Harmony here is the fitting together required for bodily constitution. The claim about destruction is explained in the next paragraph: a particular condition is lost, while body as body persists.

1093.Hexis, “condition,” and diathesis, “disposition,” name the state that changes. The wording “constituted body” follows Wachsmuth’s rearrangement of the transmitted words; the apparatus records a simpler reading that omits “constituted.”

1094.The list distinguishes incorporeal conditions from body. “Enclosure” follows the conjecture periochē adopted in the printed text; “friendship” preserves the personifying language used of harmony.

1095.The attribution and Doric dialect continue those of excerpt 2. “Immediately evident” renders autothen phainomena, things evident directly or of themselves. For the criterion of intelligibles, Wachsmuth prints Jacobs’ correction “intellect” in place of the manuscripts’ “cosmos.”

1096.Logos here is an account or argument submitted to judgment. The passage assigns a role to both intellect and perception, then describes intellect as the agent that compares the account with the appropriate evidence.

1097.Pseudographiai are erroneous geometrical constructions or proofs. The printed transition is compressed; “become apparent” is carried across the contrasted clauses. Harmonia in the numerical example denotes the octave and its 2:1 ratio. The bracketed logos is rejected by Wachsmuth following Usener; it is represented as “ratio” here to show the deletion without concealing the resulting construction.

1098.The final distinction separates what a thing is, why it is so, and the fact that it exists or is so. The difficult participle “obtaining” is retained rather than silently adopting the infinitive suggested in the apparatus. “Inference” renders syllogismos without assuming that every such argument has a particular formal arrangement.

1099.Speaker labels are supplied throughout this dialogue. Technē means an acquired skill or craft. The genitive “of winter” is awkward in the ants’ example; “winter food” conveys one possible connection without importing the proposed supplement “before winter.”

1100.This is the dialogue’s ancient account of animal behavior, not a statement of modern biology. Its distinction is between a capacity common by nature and a skill acquired by particular individuals. “All” and the contrasted clause are editorial supplements.

1101.The example applies the preceding general/particular distinction. Akontes, “without willing it,” presents the behavior as involuntary rather than learned.

1102.Energeiai, consistently “activities,” are treated here as operative powers that act in bodies. The vocabulary should not be understood as referring to energy in the modern physical sense.

1103.The first sentence follows Wachsmuth’s correction tauton, “the same,” for the transmitted “this.” The argument requires a continuing supply of bodies, not the immortality of each earthly body. Sōmatōsis and sōmatopoiēsis are rendered “embodiment” and “formation of bodies.”

1104.The participle “cooperating” lacks an expressed main verb in its clause; the English supplies the parallel sense. The attachment to bodies is retained as printed, without adding the preposition proposed in the apparatus. The rejected article before “forming bodies” is represented by “[the]” in the explanatory English phrase.

1105.The opening statement about association with soul apart from body sits uneasily beside the repeated requirement that activities be in bodies. The translation preserves both statements. The following distinction concerns a body’s initial constitution and its continued existence after the soul departs.