About Mixture to the Point of Total Penetration. REFUTATION OF ANAXAGORAS AND DEMOCRITUS. 1. The subject of the present consideration is mixture to the point of total penetration of the different bodies. This has been explained in two ways: that the two liquids are mingled so as mutually to interpenetrate each other totally, or that only one of them penetrates the other. The difference between these two theories is of small importance. First we must set aside the opinion of (Anaxagoras and Democritus[58]), who explain mixture as a juxtaposition, because this is a crude combination, rather than a mixture.[59] Mixture should render the whole homogeneous, so that even the smallest molecules might each be composed of the various elements of the mixture. REFUTATION OF ARISTOTLE AND ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS. As to the (Peripatetic) philosophers who assert that in a mixture only the qualities mingle, while the material extension of both bodies are only in juxtaposition, so long as the qualities proper to each of them are spread throughout the whole mass, they seem to establish the rightness of their opinion by attacking the doctrine which asserts that the two bodies mutually interpenetrate in mixture.[60] (They object) that the molecules of both bodies will finally lose all magnitude by this continuous division which will leave no interval between the parts of either of the two bodies; for if the two bodies mutually interpenetrate each other in every part, their division must become continuous. Besides, the mixture often occupies an extent greater than each body taken separately, and as great as if mere juxtaposition had occurred. Now if two bodies mutually interpenetrate totally, the resulting mixture would occupy no more place than any one of them taken separately. The case where two bodies occupy no more space than a single one of them is by these philosophers explained by the air's expulsion, which permits one of the bodies to penetrate into the pores of the other. Besides, in the case of the mixture of two bodies of unequal extent, how could the body of the smaller extend itself sufficiently to spread into all the parts of the greater? There are many other such reasons. REFUTATION OF THE STOICS.