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partial generation; and the change from positive to negative is destruction-
absolute
change absolute destruction, and partial change partial destruction.
If, then, 'that which is not' has several senses, and movement can
attach neither to that which implies putting together or separating,
nor to that which implies potency and is opposed to that which is
in the full sense (true, the not-white or not-good can be moved incidentally,
for the not-white might be a man; but that which is not a particular
thing at all can in no wise be moved), that which is not cannot be
moved (and if this is so, generation cannot be movement; for that
which is not is generated; for even if we admit to the full that its
generation is accidental, yet it is true to say that 'not-being' is
predicable of that which is generated absolutely). Similarly rest
cannot be long to that which is not. These consequences, then, turn
out to be awkward, and also this, that everything that is moved is
in a place, but that which is not is not in a place; for then it would
be somewhere. Nor is destruction movement; for the contrary of movement
is rest, but the contrary of destruction is generation. Since every
movement is a change, and the kinds of change are the three named
above, and of these those in the way of generation and destruction
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METAPHYSICS 140
are not movements, and these are the changes from a thing to its
contradictory,
it follows that only the change from positive into positive is movement.
And the positives are either contrary or intermediate (for even privation
must be regarded as contrary), and are expressed by an affirmative
term, e.g. 'naked' or 'toothless' or 'black'.
Part 12 "
"If the categories are classified as substance, quality, place, acting
or being acted on, relation, quantity, there must be three kinds of
movement-of quality, of quantity, of place. There is no movement in
respect of substance (because there is nothing contrary to substance),
nor of relation (for it is possible that if one of two things in relation
changes, the relative term which was true of the other thing ceases
to be true, though this other does not change at all,-so that their
movement is accidental), nor of agent and patient, or mover and moved,
because there is no movement of movement nor generation of generation,
nor, in general, change of change. For there might be movement of
movement in two senses; (1) movement might be the subject moved, as
a man is moved because he changes from pale to dark,-so that on this
showing movement, too, may be either heated or cooled or change its
place or increase. But this is impossible; for change is not a subject.
Or (2) some other subject might change from change into some other
form of existence (e.g. a man from disease into health). But this
also is not possible except incidentally. For every movement is change
from something into something. (And so are generation and destruction;
only, these are changes into things opposed in certain ways while
the other, movement, is into things opposed in another way.) A thing
changes, then, at the same time from health into illness, and from
this change itself into another. Clearly, then, if it has become ill,
it will have changed into whatever may be the other change concerned
(though it may be at rest), and, further, into a determinate change
each time; and that new change will be from something definite into
some other definite thing; therefore it will be the opposite change,
that of growing well. We answer that this happens only incidentally;
e.g. there is a change from the process of recollection to that of
forgetting, only because that to which the process attaches is changing,
now into a state of knowledge, now into one of ignorance.
"Further, the process will go on to infinity, if there is to be change
of change and coming to be of coming to be. What is true of the later,
then, must be true of the earlier; e.g. if the simple coming to be
was once coming to be, that which comes to be something was also once
coming to be; therefore that which simply comes to be something was
not yet in existence, but something which was coming to be coming
to be something was already in existence. And this was once coming
to be, so that at that time it was not yet coming to be something
else. Now since of an infinite number of terms there is not a first,
the first in this series will not exist, and therefore no following
term exist. Nothing, then, can either come term wi to be or move or
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