Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​for without some sympatheia conveyed from there, such perceptual awareness would not occur. We must not, therefore, suppose that the air itself is shaped by the emitted voice or by similar things—for it will suffer much insufficiency if it undergoes this from that source—but rather that the blow produced in us when we emit voice immediately effects such an extrusion of certain particles capable of producing a windy stream, which produces the auditory affection in us. "Moreover, one must also believe that smell, just like hearing, would never produce any affection, if there were not certain particles carried off from the object, commensurate for stimulating this sense organ, some being in a disturbed and alien condition, others in an undisturbed and harmonious condition.

"Furthermore, one must believe that the atoms possess none of the qualities of the phenomenal things except shape, weight, and size, and whatever is of necessity inherently united with shape. For every quality changes, but the atoms do not change at all, since it is necessary that something solid and indissoluble remain in the dissolutions of compounds, which will not make changes into what is not nor out of what is not, but by transpositions in many cases, and by accessions and departures of some. Hence it is necessary that the things which are transposed be indestructible, not having the nature of what changes, but their own particles and configurations; for these are also what must necessarily remain.

"For indeed in the things around us that change shape, the shape is received as inherent during stripping away, whereas the qualities do not remain inherently in that which changes, in the way that the shape is left behind, but perish from the whole body. These remaining parts are therefore sufficient to produce the differences of the compounds, since it is necessary that some things at least remain and not be destroyed into what is not. "Yet one must not suppose that every size exists among the atoms, lest the phenomena testify against it; rather, one must suppose that there are certain variations of sizes. For with this also being present, the facts concerning affections and senses will be better accounted for.

​For every size to exist is neither useful for the differences of qualities, and visible atoms ought at the same time to have reached us; which is neither seen to occur, nor can it be conceived how an atom could become visible. "In addition to these points, one must not suppose that in a bounded body there are infinite particles, nor of any size whatever. So that not only must division into the infinite in the direction of the smaller be rejected, in order that we may not make all things weak and be forced in our apprehensions of aggregates to consume existing things by squeezing them into what is not, but also one must not suppose that transition in bounded things takes place to infinity, nor in the direction of the smaller.

"For neither is it possible, once someone says that infinite particles or particles of any size whatsoever exist in something, to conceive how this magnitude could still be finite. For it is clear that the infinite particles are of some size; and whatever size these may be, the magnitude also would be infinite. And since the finite has an extremity distinguishable, even if not perceptible by itself, it is impossible not to conceive that what is next to this is also of such a nature, and thus by proceeding consecutively forward, it is possible also in thought to arrive at the infinite of such a kind.