384 /l/-47
place does not exist either. If, then, the dimension of place is discovered
in none of the aforementioned modes, it is not the case that place exists.
- In addition to these arguments it is said that whenever the body
enters the void and place comes to be, either the void remains or it
withdraws or is destroyed. But if it remains, the same thing will be both
void and full; if it withdraws by locomotion, or is destroyed by changing,
the void will be a body. But it is absurd either to say that the same thing
is void and body or that the void is a body. Therefore, it is absurd to
say that it is possible for the void to be occupied by a body and to
become place. - For these reasons, the void is found to be non-existent, at least
if it is not possible for it to be occcupied by a body and to become place.
For that which is such as to be occupied by a body was said to be a void.
Further, space is overturned along with place and void. For if a large
place is space, it is implicated along with place, and if it is what is partly
occupied by a body and is partly an empty interval, it is abolished along
with both of these.
These things, then, and even more can be said against the Stoics'
position regarding place. 131. The Peripatetics say that place is the limit
of that which surrounds insofar as it surrounds, so that my place is the
surface of the air pressing on my body. But if this is place, the same
thing will and will not be. For when the body is about to be in some
place, insofar as nothing can be in that which does not exist, it is necessary
for the place to exist already, so that the body could come to be in it,
and for this reason the place will exist prior to the body's coming to be
in it. But insofar as place is made to be the surface of the air that
surrounds pressing on what is surrounded, it cannot exist prior to the
body's coming to be in it, for which reason it will not then exist. But it
is absurd to say that the same thing is and is not. Therefore, it is
not the case that place is the limit of that which surrounds insofar as
it surrounds. - In addition to these arguments, if place is something, it is either
generated or ungenerated. But it is not ungenerated. For, they say, it is
made by being pressed around the body within it. But neither is it
generated. For if it is generated, then the place in which the thing which
is in place is said to be is either generated when the body is in place, or
when it is not in it. 133. But it is neither the case that the place comes
to be when the body is in it (for the place of the body in it already exists),
nor when it is not in it, at least if, as they say, place arises when that
which surrounds is pressed around that which is surrounded, since it
cannot be pressed around that which is not in it. If place is neither
generated when the body is in it nor when it is not in it and it is not