Authors/Aristotle/metaphysics/l7/c7

Chapter 7

Latin	English
Eorum autem quae fiunt haec quidem natura fiunt haec autem arte alia autem casu.	Chapter 7. Of things that come to be, some come to be by nature, some by art, some spontaneously.
Omnia vero quae fiunt ab aliquo fiunt et ex aliquo et aliquid. Hoc autem aliquid dico ↵ secundum quamlibet cathegoriam; aut enim hoc aut quantum aut quale aut quando.	Now everything that comes to be comes to be by the agency of something and from something and comes to be something. And the something which I say it comes to be may be found in any category; it may come to be either a ‘this’ or of some size or of some quality or somewhere.
Et generationes autem naturales quidem hee ƿ sunt quarum generatio ex natura est.	Now natural comings to be are the comings to be of those things which come to be by nature;
Hoc autem ex quo fit, quam dicimus materiam; hoc autem a quo eorum quae natura aliquid sunt; hoc autem aliquid homo aut planta aut aliud quid talium, quae maxime dicimus substantias esse.	and that out of which they come to be is what we call matter; and that by which they come to be is something which exists naturally; and the something which they come to be is a man or a plant or one of the things of this kind, which we say are substances if anything is –
Omnia vero ↵ quae fiunt aut natura aut arte habent materiam; possibile enim et esse et non esse eorum quodlibet, hoc autem est quae in unoquoque materia.	all things produced either by nature or by art have matter; for each of them is capable both of being and of not being, and this capacity is the matter in each –
Universaliter vero et ex quo natura et secundum quod natura (factum enim habet naturam, ut planta aut animal) et a quo quae secundum speciem dicta natura quae eiusdem speciei (haec autem in alio); homo namque ↵ hominem generat. Sic quidem igitur fiunt quae fiunt propter naturam.	and, in general, both that from which they are produced is nature, and the type according to which they are produced is nature (for that which is produced, e.g. a plant or an animal, has a nature), and so is that by which they are produced—the so-called ‘formal’ nature, which is specifically the same (though this is in another individual); for man begets man. Thus, then, are natural products produced;
Generationes vero aliae dicuntur factiones. Omnes autem factiones sunt aut ab arte aut a potestate aut a mente. Harum autem quaedam fiunt et a casu et a fortuna, similiter ut ↵ in factis a natura; quaedam enim et illic eadem et ex spermate fiunt et sine spermate. De hiis quidem igitur posterius perscrutandam.	All other productions are called ‘makings’. And all makings proceed either from art or from a faculty or from thought. Some of them happen also spontaneously or by luck just as natural products sometimes do; for there also the same things sometimes are produced without seed as well as from seed. Concerning these cases, then, we must inquire later,
Ab arte vero fiunt quorumcumque species est in ↵ anima. Speciem autem dico quid erat esse cuiusque et primam substantiam. Et enim contrariorum modo quodam eadem species. Privationis enim substantia quae substantiae opposita, ut sanitas infirmitatis; illius enim absentia ostenditur infirmitas, ↵ sanitas autem quae in anima ratio et in scientia.	but from art proceed the things of which the form is in the soul of the artist. (By form I mean the essence of each [32b] thing and its primary substance.) For even contraries have in a sense the same form; for the substance of a privation is the opposite substance, e.g. health is the substance of disease (for disease is the absence of health); and health is the formula in the soul or the knowledge of it.
Fit itaque sanitas intelligente ita: quoniam hoc sanitas, necesse si sanitas erit, hoc existere, puta regularitatem, sed si hoc, calorem; et ita semper intelligit, donec utique adducat in hod quod ipse valet ultimum facere. Deinde iam ab hoc motus ↵ factio vocatur ad sanandum. Quare accidit modo quodam ex ƿ sanitate sanitatem fieri et domum ex domo, sine materia materiam habentem; medicinalis enim ese et aedificatoria species sanitatis et domus, dico autem substantiam sine materia quod quid erat esse.	The healthy subject is produced as the result of the following train of thought: – since this is health, if the subject is to be healthy this must first be present, e.g. a uniform state of body, and if this is to be present, there must be heat; and the physician goes on thinking thus until he reduces the matter to a final something which he himself can produce. Then the process from this point onward, i.e. the process towards health, is called a ‘making’. Therefore it follows that in a sense health comes from health and house from house, that with matter from that without matter; for the medical art and the building art are the form of health and of the house, and when I speak of substance without matter I mean the essence.
↵ Generationum vero et motuum haec quidem intelligentia vocatur illa vero factio. Quae quidem a principio et a specie intelligentia, quae vero ab ultimo intelligentiae factio. Similiter autem et in aliis intermediis unumquodque fit. Dico autem ut si convalescit, oportet adaequari. Quid igitur est adaequari? ↵ Hoc. Hoc autem erit, si calefactum fuerit. Hoc vero quid est? Hoc. Existit autem hoc potestate; hoc autem iam in ipso. Faciens itaque et unde inchoat motus sanandi, si quidem ab arte, species est quae in anima;	Of the productions or processes one part is called thinking and the other making, – that which proceeds from the starting-point and the form is thinking, and that which proceeds from the final step of the thinking is making. And each of the other, intermediate, things is produced in the same way. I mean, for instance, if the subject is to be healthy his bodily state must be made uniform. What then does being made uniform imply? This or that. And this depends on his being made warm. What does this imply? Something else. And this something is present potentially; and what is present potentially is already in the physician’s power.The active principle then and the starting point for the process of becoming healthy is, if it happens by art, the form in the soul,
si vero a casu, ab hoc quod ↵ quidem faciendi est principium facienti ab arte, ut quod in mederi forsam a calefactione principium; hoc autem facit fricatione. Calor itaque in corpore aut pars est sanitatis aut sequitur eum aliquid tale quod est pars sanitatis, aut per plura; hoc autem ultimum faciens, et quod est ita, pars est sanitatis et ↵ domus (ut lapides) et aliorum.	and if spontaneously, it is that, whatever it is, which starts the making, for the man who makes by art, as in healing the starting-point is perhaps the production of warmth (and this the physician produces by rubbing). Warmth in the body, then, is either a part of health or is followed (either directly or through several intermediate steps) by something similar which is a part of health; and this, viz. that which produces the part of health, is the limiting-point—and so too with a house (the stones are the limiting-point here) and in all other cases.
Quare, sicut dicitur, impossibile factum esse, si nihil praeextiterit. Quod quidem igitur pars ex necessitate existet, palam; materia namque pars, inest ↵ enim et fit haec. Sed igitur et eorum quae in ratione. Utroque autem modo dicimus multos circulos quid sunt: et materiam dicentes quia es, et speciem quia talis, et hoc est genus ↵ in quod primum ponitur. Aereus itaque circulus habet in ratione materiam.	Therefore, as the saying goes, it is impossible that anything should be produced if there were nothing existing before. Obviously then some part of the result will pre-exist of necessity; for the matter is a part; for this is present in the process and it is this that becomes [33a] something. But is the matter an element even in the formula? We certainly describe in both ways what brazen circles are; we describe both the matter by saying it is brass, and the form by saying that it is such and such a figure; and figure is the proximate genus in which it is placed. The brazen circle, then, has its matter in its formula.
Ex quo vero ut materia fit quaedam dicuntur, quando fiunt, non illud sed illius modi; ut statua non lapis sed lapidea, homo autem convalescens non dicitur illud ex quo. Causa vero quia ƿ fit ex privatione et subiecto, quod dicimus materiam, ut et ↵ homo et laborens fit sanus. Magis tamen dicimus fieri ex privatione, ut ex laborante sanus quam ex homine; propter quod laborens quidem qui sanus non dicitur, sed homo, et homo sanus. Quorum vero privatio non manifesta et innominabilis, ut in aere figurae cuiuslibet aut in lateribus et lignis domus, ↵ ex hiis videtur fieri ut illic ex laborante. Propter quod sicut nec ibi ex quo hoc, illud non dicitur, nec hic statua lignum, sed producitur lignea, non lignum, et enea, non es, et lapidea sed non lapis, et domus latericia sed non lateres. Quoniam neque quod ex ligno fit statua aut ex lateribus domus, si ↵ quis valde inspexerit, non utique simpliciter dicet, quia oportet permutato fieri ex quo, sed non permanente. Propter hoc quidem igitur ita dicitur.	As for that out of which as matter they are produced, some things are said, when they have been produced, to be not that but ‘thaten’; e.g. the statue is not gold but golden. And a healthy man is not said to be that from which he has come. The reason is that though a thing comes both from its privation and from its substratum, which we call its matter (e.g. what becomes healthy is both a man and an invalid), it is said to come rather from its privation (e.g. it is from an invalid rather than from a man that a healthy subject is produced). And so the healthy subject is not said to he an invalid, but to be a man, and the man is said to be healthy. But as for the things whose privation is obscure and nameless, e.g. in brass the privation of a particular shape or in bricks and timber the privation of arrangement as a house, the thing is thought to be produced from these materials, as in the former case the healthy man is produced from an invalid. And so, as there also a thing is not said to be that from which it comes, here the statue is not said to be wood but is said by a verbal change to be wooden, not brass but brazen, not gold but golden, and the house is said to be not bricks but bricken (though we should not say without qualification, if we looked at the matter carefully, even that a statue is produced from wood or a house from bricks, because coming to be implies change in that from which a thing comes to be, and not permanence). It is for this reason, then, that we use this way of speaking.