Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
CHAPTER XIX.
OF PLACE.
Plato, to define place, calls it that thing which in its own bosom
receives forms and ideas; by which metaphor he signifies matter, being
(as it were) a nurse or receptacle of beings. Aristotle, that it is
the ultimate superficies of the circumambient body, contiguous to that
which it doth encompass.
CHAPTER XX.
OF SPACE.
The Stoics and Epicureans make a place, a vacuum, and a space to
differ. A vacuum is that which is void of any thing that may be called
a body; place is that which is possessed by a body; a space that which
is partly filled with a body, as a cask with wine.
CHAPTER XXI.
OF TIME.
In the sense of Pythagoras, time is that sphere which encompasses the
world. Plato says that it is a movable image of eternity, or the
interval of the world’s motion. Eratosthenes, that it is the solar
motion.
CHAPTER XXII.
OF THE ESSENCE AND NATURE OF TIME.
Plato says that the heavenly motion is time. Most of the Stoics affirm
that motion itself is time. Most philosophers think that time had no
beginning; Plato, that time had only an ideal beginning.
CHAPTER XXIII.
OF MOTION.
Plato and Pythagoras say that motion is a change and alteration in
matter. Aristotle, that it is the actual operation of that which may be
moved. Democritus, that there is but one sort of motion, and it is that
which is vibratory. Epicurus, that there are two species of motion,
one perpendicular, and the other oblique. Herophilus, that one species
of motion is obvious only to reason, the other to sense. Heraclitus
utterly denies that there is any thing of quiet or repose in nature;
for that is the state of the dead; one sort of motion is eternal, which
he assigns to beings eternal, the other perishable, to those things
which are perishable.
CHAPTER XXIV.
OF GENERATION AND CORRUPTION.
Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno deny that there are any such things
as generation and corruption, for they suppose that the universe is
unmovable. Empedocles, Epicurus, and other philosophers that combine
in this, that the world is framed of small corporeal particles meeting
together, affirm that corruption and generation are not so properly to
be accepted; but there are conjunctions and separations, which do not
consist in any alteration according to their qualities, but are made
according to quantity by coalition or disjunction. Pythagoras, and all
those who take for granted that matter is subject to mutation, say that
generation and corruption are to be accepted in their proper sense, and
that they are accomplished by the alteration, mutation, and dissolution
of elements.
CHAPTER XXV.
OF NECESSITY.
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