Adversus Coloten

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. V. Goodwin, William W., editor; A. G., translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

How then? Do not Plato, Aristotle, and Xenocrates produce gold from that which is not gold, and stone from that which is not stone, and many other things from the four simple first bodies? Yes indeed; but with those bodies immediately concur also the principles for the generation of every thing, bringing with them great contributions, that is, the first qualities which are in them; then, when they come to assemble and join in one the dry with the moist, the cold with the hot, and the solid with the soft, — that is active bodies with such as are fit to suffer and receive every alteration and change, — then is generation wrought by passing from one temperature to another. Whereas the atom, being alone, is deprived and destitute of all quality and generative faculty, and when it comes to meet with the others, it can make only a noise and sound because of its hardness and firmness, but nothing else. For they always strike and are stricken, not being able by this means to compose or make an animal, a soul, or a nature, nay, not so much as a mass or heap of themselves; for that as they beat upon one another, so they fly back again asunder.

But Colotes, as if he were speaking to some ignorant

and unlettered king, again attacks Empedocles for breathing forth the same thought:
  • I’ve one thing more to say. ’Mongst mortals there
  • No Nature is; nor that grim thing men fear
  • So much, called death. There only happens first
  • A mixture, and mixt things asunder burst
  • Again, when them disunion does befall.
  • And this is that which men do Nature call.
    • For my part, I do not see how this is repugnant and contrary to life or living, especially amongst those who hold that there is no generation of that which is not, nor corruption of that which is, but that the assembling and union of the things which are is called generation, and their dissolution and disunion named corruption and death. For that he took Nature for generation, and that this is his meaning, he has himself declared, when he opposed Nature to death. And if they neither live nor can live who place generation in union and death in disunion, what else do these Epicureans? Yet Empedocles, gluing, (as it were) and conjoining the elements together by heats, softnesses, and humidities, gives them in some sort a mixtion and unitive composition; but these men who hunt and drive together the atoms, which they affirm to be immutable and impassible, compose nothing proceeding from them, but indeed make many and continual percussions of them.

    For the interlacement, hindering the dissolution, more and more augments the collision and concussion; so that there is neither mixtion nor adhesion and conglutination, but only a confusion and combat, which according to them is called generation. And if the atoms do now recoil for a moment by reason of the shock they have given, and then return again after the blow is past, they are above double the time absent from one another, without either touching or approaching, so as nothing can be made of them, not even so much as a body without a soul. But as

    for sense, soul, understanding, and prudence, there is not any man who can in the least conceive or imagine how it is possible they should be made in a voidness, and of atoms which neither when separate and apart have any quality, nor any passion or alteration when they are assembled and joined together, especially seeing this their meeting together is not an incorporation or congress, making a mixture or coalition, but rather percussions and repercussions. So that, according to the doctrine of these people, life is taken away, and the being of an animal denied, since they suppose principles void, impassible, godless, and soulless, and such as cannot admit or receive any mixture or incorporation whatever.