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Chapter VII.—Are Bodies Apprehensible
[38] Some say that Body is that which is capable of being active or passive.
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But so far as this conception goes it is inapprehensible. For, as we have shown, Cause is inapprehensible; and if we cannot say whether any Cause exists, neither can we say whether anything passive exists; for what is passive is certainly made passive by a Cause. And when both the Cause and the passive object are inapprehensible, the result will be that Body also is inapprehensible.
[39] But some define Body as what has three dimensions combined with resistance or solidity.
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For they describe the point as that which has no parts, the line as length without breadth, the surface as length with breadth; and when this takes on both depth and resistance there is formed Body—the object of our present discussion—it being composed of length and breadth and depth and resistance.
[40] The answer, however, to these people is simple. For they will say either that Body is nothing more than these qualities, or that it is something else than the combination of the qualities already mentioned. Now apart from length and breadth and depth and solidity the Body would be nothing; but if these things are the Body, anyone who shall prove that they are unreal will likewise abolish the Body; for wholes are abolished along with the sum of their parts.
Now it is possible to disprove these dimensions in a variety of ways; but for the present it will be enough to say that if the Limits
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exist, they are either lines or surfaces or bodies.
[41] If, then, one should affirm the existence of a surface or a line, then it will be affirmed that each of the afore-mentioned objects either can subsist of itself or is cognized solely in connexion with so-called Bodies. But to imagine either a line or a surface as existing of itself is doubtless silly. While if it should be said that each of these objects is cognized solely in connexion with the Bodies and has no independent existence, it will thereby be granted, in the first place, that the Bodies are not generated from them (for if so, I suppose, these objects ought to have had independent existence first, and then have combined to form the Bodies);
[42] and further, they have no real existence even in the so-called Bodies.
This can be shown by several arguments, but for the present it will suffice to mention the difficulties which arise from
the fact of touch.
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For if juxtaposed Bodies touch one another they are in contact with their Limits—for example, with their surfaces. The surfaces, then, will not be completely unified one with another as a result of touching, since otherwise touch would be fusion and the separation of things touching a rending apart; and this is not what we find.
[43] And if the surface touches the surface of the juxtaposed Body with some of its parts, and with other parts is united with the Body of which it is a limit,
it will not be without depth, since its parts are conceived as different in respect of depth, one part touching the juxtaposed Body, the other being that which effects its union with the Body whereof it is a limit. Hence, even in connexion with Body one cannot imagine length and breadth without depth, nor, consequently, surface.
So likewise when two surfaces are, let us imagine, juxtaposed along the limits where they come to an end, by way of what is called their ‟length,” that is to say by way of their ‟lines,” then these lines, by means of which the surfaces are said to touch each other, will not be unified (else they would be fused together); yet if each of them touches the line which lies next to it breadth-wise with some of its parts and by others is united with the surface of which it is a limit, it will not be without breadth, and, consequently, it will not be a line. But if there exists in Body neither line nor surface, neither length nor breadth nor depth will exist in Body.
[44] And should anyone assert that the Limits are bodies, he can be answered very shortly. For if length is a body, it must needs be divided into its three dimensions, and each of these, in turn, being a body will be divided into three other dimensions, which will be bodies, and these likewise into others, and so on ad infinitum, so that the Body comes to be of infinite size, being divided into an infinity of parts: this result is absurd, and therefore the dimensions aforesaid are not bodies. But if they are neither bodies nor lines nor surfaces, they will be held to have no existence.
[45] Solidity
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also is inapprehensible. For if it is apprehended, it must be apprehended by touch. If, then, we shall prove that touch is inapprehensible, it will be clear that it is impossible for solidity to be apprehended. That touch is inapprehensible we argue as follows. Things which touch one another either touch with their parts or as wholes touching wholes. Now they certainly will not touch as wholes; for then they will be unified instead of being in contact with one another. Nor yet through parts touching parts; for their parts, though in relation to the wholes they are parts, are wholes in relation to their parts.
[46] So these wholes, which are parts of other things, will not touch as wholes touching wholes, for the reasons aforesaid, nor yet through parts touching parts; for their parts, too, being wholes relatively to their own parts, will not be in contact either as wholes with wholes or as parts with parts. But if we apprehend the occurrence of touch neither by way of wholeness nor by way of parts, touch will be inapprehensible. And, consequently, solidity also; and, therefore, Body; for if this is nothing more than the three dimensions plus Solidity, and we have proved that each of these is inapprehensible, Body also will be inapprehensible.
Thus, then, if we are to judge by the conception
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of Body, it is inapprehensible whether any body exists;
[47] and about this problem there is this also to be said. Of existing things some, they say, are sensible, others intelligible, and the latter are apprehended by the reason, the former by the senses, and the senses are ‟simply-passive,”
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while the reason proceeds from the apprehension of sensibles to the apprehension of intelligibles. If then any body exists, it is either sensible or intelligible. Now it is not sensible; for it is supposed to be apprehended as a conglomeration of length and depth and breadth and solidity and colour and various other things, along with which it is experienced; whereas, according to their statements, the senses are ‟simply-passive.”
[48] And if Body is said to be intelligible, there must certainly be pre-existent in the nature of things some sensible object from which to derive the notion of bodies, they being intelligible. But nothing exists save Body and the Incorporeal, and of these the Incorporeal is essentially intelligible,
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and Body, as we have shown, is not sensible. Since, then, no sensible object exists in the nature of things from which we can derive the notion of Body, Body will not be intelligible either. And if it is neither sensible nor intelligible, and besides these nothing else exists, we must declare that, so far as this argument goes, Body has no existence.
[49] Accordingly we, by thus opposing the arguments against Body to the apparent existence of Body, infer suspension of judgement concerning Body.
The inapprehensibility of Body involves also that of the Incorporeal. For privations are conceived as privations of states or faculties, as, for example, blindness of sight, deafness of hearing, and similarly with the rest. Hence, in order to apprehend a privation, we must first have apprehended the state of which the privation is said to be a privation; for if one had no conception of sight one would not be able to assert that this man does not possess sight, which is the meaning of being blind.
[50] If then Incorporeality is the privation of Body, and when states are not apprehended it is impossible for the privations of them to be apprehended, and it has been proved that Body is inapprehensible, Incorporeality also will be inapprehensible. Moreover, it is either sensible or intelligible. And if it is sensible, it is inapprehensible because of the variance amongst animals and men, the senses and the circumstances, and owing to the admixtures and all the other things we have previously described in our exposition of the Ten Tropes.
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If, again, it is intelligible, since the apprehension of sensibles, which is supposed to form the starting-point from which we attain to the intelligibles,
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is not immediately given, neither will the apprehension of the intelligibles be given immediately, nor, consequently, that of Incorporeality.
[51] Also, he who asserts that he apprehends the Incorporeal will maintain that he apprehends it either by sense or by means of reason. Certainly not by sense, since it is supposed that the senses perceive the sensibles by way of ‟impression” and ‟indentation,” —take sight, for instance, whether it occur by reason of the tension of a cone, or of the emissions and immissions of images, or by effusions of rays or colours;
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and hearing too, whether it be the smitten air
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or the parts of the sound that are carried round the ears and smite the acoustic breath so as to effect the perception of sound. Smells also impinge on the nose and flavours on the tongue, and likewise objects of touch on the sense of touch.
[52] But incorporeals are incapable of submitting to impression of this kind, so that they could not be apprehended by sense.
Nor yet by means of reason. For if the reason is ‟verbally expressible”
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and incorporeal, as the Stoics assert, he who says that incorporeals are apprehended by means of reason is begging the question, For when our question is—‟Can an incorporeal object be apprehended?” he assumes an incorporeal object and then, by means of it alone, claims to effect the apprehension of incorporeals. Yet reason itself, if it is incorporeal, belongs to the class of things which are in question.
[53] How, then, is one to prove that this particular incorporeal (I mean reason) is previously apprehended? For if it is by means of another incorporeal, we shall ask for the proof of its apprehension also, and so on ad infinitum; whereas, if it is by means of a body, the apprehension of bodies is also in question; by what means, then, are we to prove that the body which is assumed in order to prove the apprehension of the incorporeal reason is itself apprehended? If by means of a body, we are plunged into infinite regress; while if we do so by means of an incorporeal, we are wrecked on circular reasoning. Reason, then, since it is incorporeal, remaining thus inapprehensible, no one will be able to say that by means of it the incorporeal is apprehended.
[54] But if reason is a body, inasmuch as about bodies also there is much controversy as to whether or not they are apprehended, owing to what is called their ‟continual flux,”
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which gives rise to the view that they do not admit of the title ‟this” and are non- existent—just as Plato
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speaks of bodies as ‟becoming but never being,”—I am perplexed as to how this controversy about Body is to be settled, as I see that it cannot be settled, because of the difficulties stated a moment ago, either by a body or by an incorporeal. Neither, then, is it possible to apprehend the incorporeals by reason.
[55] And if they are neither objects of sense nor apprehended by means of reason, they will not be apprehended at all.
If, then, it is impossible to be positive either about the existence of Body or about the Incorporeals, we must also suspend judgement concerning the Elements, and possibly about the things which lie behind the Elements
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as well, seeing that of these some are bodies, others incorporeals, and both of these are matters of doubt. In fact, when both the active and the material Principles, for these reasons, call for suspense of judgement, the doctrine of Principles is open to doubt.
Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes. Sextus Empiricus. Robert Gregg Bury (Translator). London. 1933.
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