WE have already discussed the first heaven and its parts, the moving stars within it, the matter of which these are composed and their bodily constitution, and we have also shown that they are ungenerated and indestructible.Now things that we call natural are either substances or functions and attributes of substances.As substances I class the simple bodies-fire, earth, and the other terms of the series-and all things composed of them; for example, the heaven as a whole and its parts, animals, again, and plants and their parts.By attributes and functions I mean the movements of these and of all other things in which they have power in themselves to cause movement, and also their alterations and reciprocal transformations.It is obvious, then, that the greater part of the inquiry into nature concerns bodies: for a natural substance is either a body or a thing which cannot come into existence without body and magnitude.This appears plainly from an analysis of the character of natural things, and equally from an inspection of the instances of inquiry into nature.Since, then, we have spoken of the primary element, of its bodily constitution, and of its freedom from destruction and generation, it remains to speak of the other two.In speaking of them we shall be obliged also to inquire into generation and destruction.For if there is generation anywhere, it must be in these elements and things composed of them.
This is indeed the first question we have to ask: is generation a fact or not? Earlier speculation was at variance both with itself and with the views here put forward as to the true answer to this question.Some removed generation and destruction from the world altogether.Nothing that is, they said, is generated or destroyed, and our conviction to the contrary is an illusion.So maintained the school of Melissus and Parmenides.But however excellent their theories may otherwise be, anyhow they cannot be held to speak as students of nature.There may be things not subject to generation or any kind of movement, but if so they belong to another and a higher inquiry than the study of nature.They, however, had no idea of any form of being other than the substance of things perceived; and when they saw, what no one previously had seen, that there could be no knowledge or wisdom without some such unchanging entities, they naturally transferred what was true of them to things perceived.
Others, perhaps intentionally, maintain precisely the contrary opinion to this.It has been asserted that everything in the world was subject to generation and nothing was ungenerated, but that after being generated some things remained indestructible while the rest were again destroyed.This had been asserted in the first instance by Hesiod and his followers, but afterwards outside his circle by the earliest natural philosophers.But what these thinkers maintained was that all else has been generated and, as they said, 'is flowing away, nothing having any solidity, except one single thing which persists as the basis of all these transformations.So we may interpret the statements of Heraclitus of Ephesus and many others.And some subject all bodies whatever to generation, by means of the composition and separation of planes.
Discussion of the other views may be postponed.But this last theory which composes every body of planes is, as the most superficial observation shows, in many respects in plain contradiction with mathematics.It is, however, wrong to remove the foundations of a science unless you can replace them with others more convincing.
And, secondly, the same theory which composes solids of planes clearly composes planes of lines and lines of points, so that a part of a line need not be a line.This matter has been already considered in our discussion of movement, where we have shown that an indivisible length is impossible.But with respect to natural bodies there are impossibilities involved in the view which asserts indivisible lines, which we may briefly consider at this point.For the impossible consequences which result from this view in the mathematical sphere will reproduce themselves when it is applied to physical bodies, but there will be difficulties in physics which are not present in mathematics; for mathematics deals with an abstract and physics with a more concrete object.There are many attributes necessarily present in physical bodies which are necessarily excluded by indivisibility;
