Page:Metaphysics by Aristotle Ross 1908 (deannotated).djvu/128

 which it would naturally have it. — (4) The violent taking away of anything is called privation.

There are just as many kinds of privations as there are of words with negative prefixes or affixes; for a thing is called unequal because it has not equality though it would naturally have it, and invisible either because it has no colour at all or because it has a poor colour, and footless either because it has no feet at all or because it has imperfect feet. Again, a privative term may be used because the thing has little of the attribute (and this means having it in a sense imperfectly), e.g. 'kernelless'; or because it has it not easily or not well (e.g. we call a thing indivisible not only if it cannot be divided but also if it cannot be easily or well divided); or because it has not the attribute at all; for it is not the one-eyed man but he who is sightless in both eyes that is called blind. This is why not every man is good or bad, just or unjust, but there is also an intermediate state.

Chapter 23

To 'have' or 'hold' means many things, (1) To treat a thing according to one's own nature or according to one's own impulse, so that fever is said to have a man, and tyrants to have their cities, and people to have the clothes they wear. — (2) That in which a thing is present as in something receptive is said to have the thing, e.g. the bronze has the form of the statue, and the body has the disease. — (3) As that which contains holds that which is contained; for a thing is said to be held by that in which it is contained, e.g. we say that the vessel holds the liquid and the city holds men and the ship sailors; and so too that the whole holds the parts. — (4) That which hinders a thing from moving or acting according to its own impulse is said to hold it, as pillars hold the incumbent weights, and as the poets make Atlas hold the heavens, implying that otherwise they would collapse on the earth, as some of the natural philosophers also say. In this way that which holds things together is said to hold the things it holds together, since they would otherwise separate, each according to its own impulse.