Capítulo 8. Chapter VIII.—Concerning Mixture
[3.8.56] But, to pass over these problems, how do they explain the production of the compounds from the primary elements,[377] when neither contact and touch nor mixture or blending[378] has any existence at all? For that touch is nothing I showed a moment ago, when I was discussing the subsistence of Body; and that the method of Mixture is equally impossible on their own showing, I shall briefly demonstrate. For there is much argument about Mixture, and the rival views held by the Dogmatists[379] on the problem propounded are well-nigh endless; and hence we might straightway infer, along with the indeterminable controversy, the inapprehensibility of the problem. And we shall for the moment, owing to the design of our treatise, excuse ourselves from answering all their views in detail, deeming that the following remarks will amply suffice for the present.
[3.8.57] They declare that mixed things are composed of substance and qualities. If so, one must declare either that their substances are blended[380] but not their qualities, or their qualities blended but not their substances any longer, or neither blended with the other, or both unified with each other. But if neither the qualities nor the substances are blended with one another, Mixture will be inconceivable; for how will a single sensation result from the things mixed if the things mixed are blended with one another in none of the ways stated above?
[3.8.58] And if it should be said that the qualities are simply juxtaposed and the substances blended, even so the statement would be absurd; for we do not perceive the qualities in the mixtures as separate objects but as a single sense- impression produced by the mixed things. And anyone who should assert that the qualities are blended, but the substances not, would be asserting the impossible; for the reality of the qualities resides in the substances, so that it would be ridiculous to assert that the qualities by themselves, in separation from the substances, are somehow blended with one another, while the substances are left apart void of quality.
[3.8.59] It only remains to say that both the qualities and the substances of the mixed things permeate one another[381] and by their blending produce Mixture. But this is a more absurd view than any of the foregoing; for such a mixture is impossible. Thus, for example, if a cup of hemlock juice were blended with ten cups of water, it will be said that the hemlock is mixed in with all the water; for certainly if one were to take even the least portion of the mixture he would find it full of the potency of the hemlock.
[3.8.60] Yet if the hemlock is blended in with every particle of the water and is distributed as a whole over the whole volume of the water and through the mutual interpenetration of both their substances and their qualities, so that Mixture may in this way result; and if the things so distributed over each other in every particle occupy an equal space, so that they are equal to each other,— then the cup of hemlock will be equal to the ten cups of water, so that the blend must consist of twenty cups or of only two, according to the assumption now made as to the mode of Mixture. And if, again, a cup of water were poured into the twenty cups, then—according to the theory assumed—the quantity is bound to be forty cups or, again, only two, since it is admissible to conceive either the one cup as all the twenty over which it is distributed, or the twenty cups as the one with which they are equalized.
[3.8.61] And by thus pouring in a cup at a time and pursuing the same argument it is possible to infer that the twenty cups seen in the blend must be twenty thousand and more, according to the theory of Mixture assumed, and at the same time only two—a conclusion which reaches the very height of incongruity. Wherefore this theory of Mixture also is absurd.
[3.8.62] But if Mixture cannot come about by the mutual blending either of the substances alone or of the qualities alone or of both or of neither, and it is impossible to conceive any other ways than these, then the process of Mixture and of blending in general is inconceivable. Hence, if the so-called Elements are unable to form the compounds either by way of contact through juxtaposition or by mixture or blending, then, so far as this argument goes, the physical theory of the Dogmatists is inconceivable.