Note 26 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

According to Alex. 142, a, the following arguments were used by Chrysippus:—(1) The argument from κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι—our notion of κρᾶσις is different from that of σύγχυσις or παράθεσις. (2) Many bodies are capable of extension, whilst retaining their own properties; frankincense, for instance, when burnt, and gold. (3) The soul penetrates every part of the body, without losing its properties. So φύσις does in plants, and ἕξις does in all which it connects. (4) The same holds good of fire in red-hot metal, of fire and air in water and earth, of poisons and perfumes in things with which they are mixed, and of light, which penetrates air.

The first of these arguments clearly does not embody the real reason in the mind of Chrysippus; it might, with equal justice, have been used to prove anything else. Just as little does the second; for the phenomena to which it refers would be equally well explained on the theory of simple intermingling (παράθεσις) or complete (σύγχυσις) mixing. Nor does the fourth argument, taken independently of the theory of the corporeal nature of properties, necessarily lead to the idea of κρᾶσις as distinct from παράθεσις and σύγχυσις. For heat, according to the Peripatetic view, might be regarded as a property of what is hot, light as a definite property of a transparent body (conf. Alex. 143, a), παράθεσις and σύγχυσις sufficing for other things. Even the fact, greatly insisted upon by the Stoics, that things so mixed can be again separated into their component materials (Alex. 143, a; Stob. i. 378), was not conclusive. As long as the knowledge of the actual composition depended on isolated cases and crude experiments, like the one named by Stobæus (into a mixture of wine and water, put an oiled sponge, it will absorb the water and not the wine), and as long as the substantial change of elements, advocated by the Stoics as well as by the Peripatetics, was clung to, it was no difficult matter for an opponent to reply. On the other hand, the relation of the soul to the body, of property to subject-matter, of φύσις to φυτὸν, of God to the world, can hardly be otherwise explained than it was by Chrysippus, if once material existence be assigned to the soul, to φύσις, to ἕξις, and to God. We have, therefore, here the real ground on which this theory of κρᾶσις was based; and Simplicius rightly deduces it herefrom (Phys. 123, b): τὸ δὲ σῶμα διὰ σώματος χωρεῖν οἱ μὲν ἀρχαῖοι ὡς ἐναργὲς ἄτοπον ἐλάμβανον, οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς στοᾶς ὕστερον προσήκαντο ὡς ἀκολουθοῦν ταῖς σφῶν αὐτῶν ὑποθέσεσιν … σώματα γὰρ λέγειν πάντα δοκοῦντες, καὶ τὰς ποιότητας καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν, καὶ διὰ παντὸς ὁρῶντες τοῦ σώματος καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν χωροῦσαν καὶ τὰς ποιότητας ἐν ταῖς κράσεσι, συνεχώρουν σῶμα διὰ σώματος χωρεῖν. ↑