82 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus
suffering from a certain disease, that will do for the practical purpose of
healing a patient suffering from this disease.
His second objection is that a causal explanation of a substance’s having
a certain power is in many cases not possible. As for the words ‘many of
the things that are’, 1 * \), it seems that we have to think not
only of things or separate entities (e.g. foodstuffs, drugs), but also of facts
and states of affairs (e.g. honey is sweet; or, garlic affects the eyes).^18 The use
of expressions such as ‘in some way’ (!
) and ‘look like’ (
)
seem to serve the same purpose of not committing oneself to a statement
without qualification: Diocles does not say that many states of affairsare
principles, but only that theyresemblethem, show some characteristics of
them; nor does he say that this applies without qualification, but onlyin
a certain way(a way which is explicated in the clause ‘so that they do not
admit... ’,? %
.). It is not clear from the text
whether by ‘starting-points’ Diocles means fundamental physical states of
affairs or logical postulates that should be accepted as valid without further
demonstration, comparable to the logical postulates discussed by Aristotle
inMetaphysics,^19 but perhaps this is not relevant to the point he wants to
make: ‘honey is laxative’ (to mention just an imaginary example) is similar
to a postulate like ‘a statementpand its negation not-pcannot both be
true at the same time under the same conditions’ in that it does not admit
of demonstration.^20 This is not to say that the two have the same degree
of fundamentality: the point of the use of
is that there is asimilarity
between a statement like ‘honey is laxative’ and a logical postulate like the
one mentioned, and this similarity is expressed in the sentence ‘so that
they do not admit of the [kind of ] account that deals with [their] cause’
(? %
... !). Whereas a real principle like a logical
postulate is undemonstrable without qualification (M *, one is tempted
to say), foodstuffs and their effects are so only ‘in some way’ (!
).
What this ‘some way’ is, becomes clearer when we consider the words1
-
. These are usually translated in an Aristotelian-like way by ‘naturally’,
‘by nature’, or ‘normally’, suggesting as Diocles’ intention that it is in the
(^18) Cf. the translations by Jaeger (‘vieles in der Wirklichkeit Gegebene’), Kullmann (‘viele Gegeben-
heiten’); Torraca translates ‘molti fenomeni reali’, Smith ‘many things’.
(^19) Jaeger ( 1938 a, 42 ) states without argument that ‘Das Wort"weist hier nicht auf Prinzipien
der Art hin, wie die Naturphilosophen sie gesucht hatten, die Urgr ̈unde der Physis, sondern auf
Prinzipien im logischen Sinne oder oberste Beweisgr ̈unde.’ Armelle Debru has suggested to me as
an alternative that we may think here of basic or ‘simple’KM Lfoodstuffs (as against complex
ones); but then it is difficult to see why Diocles says that many things (i.e. foodstuffs)look likebasic
entities, instead of saying that theyarebasic.
(^20) Cf. Aristotle,Gen. an. 788 a 13 : ‘this is what it means to be a starting-point, being itself the cause of
many things, without there being another cause for it higher up’ ($
3 "% ,
0
3 (% .
,
*0 -# 5 ' ') # L.