Aristotle's Problems

THE PROBLEMS OF ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS: TRANSLATED INTO LATIN BY GIORGIO VALLA OF PIACENZA.

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Some problems are self-evident and known to be free of all ambiguity and questioning. For no one of sound mind, I believe, would doubt why nature has bestowed feathers upon birds. For any sagacious person will assert that she spread them around first for the sake of warmth in place of garments, and then for the sake of beauty; but hair for terrestrial animals and those that go on feet; scales for serpents; and shells or crusts for aquatic animals, of the sort which are called "ostracodermata," that is, having a crusty or shelly skin; and again, why horns are given to some, stings to others, and claws to others. And these are either sharp, or hooked, or of some other kind by which they might make themselves safer from attackers, being aided, as it were, by certain natural weapons. Nature, producing all fruits for their birth and the propagation of their kind, protected them with rinds, or certain moist or woody bodies, or tunics of this sort, covering them as if in a little chest; for escape from cold or heat or certain harmful living things, she certainly did not leave the covering entirely useless to many, but prepared it as suitable for nourishment and food. She surrounded the plants themselves with leaves and barks and similar things in place of feathers or tufts. For she foresaw lest immoderate cold or heat should destroy these; furthermore, she armed some with thorns instead of javelins lest they be consumed and afflicted by beasts; she also crowned them with various flowers for ornament and beauty’s sake, which she sent ahead as messengers and heralds to the birth of the fruits soon to break forth. Whoever, therefore, strives to solve such things as are known and open is almost insane; those who doubt whether heat is innate in fire are immune to the sense of touch; those who furthermore do not admit the motion, position, confirmation, colors, and properties in birth and death, as nature and reason providently observe, are liable to punishment. These things are surely known of themselves.

But some things are entirely insoluble, and known only to God, who established their essence. For if a craftsman has ever completed a work by devising something, he clearly understood all the causes of its actions; but the unrefined man is entirely devoid of causes. Therefore, doubtful questions are of this sort: why those slightly tickled and touched under the armpits, or the soles, or the sides laugh; or for what cause those hearing someone grinding or cutting marble, or screeching, or filing iron, immediately shudder in their teeth; or for what cause, when teeth are affected by numbness from cold fruits, cold purslane may conveniently heal them, and yet the remedies are not contraries to contraries, but rather likes. Or why the magnet stone attracts only iron; and amber also is said to attract notably only chaff and straw; and why the lion fears only the cock. The hen also, which lays eggs for us at home, cleanses herself with straw over her whole body; quails eat hellebore, which is lethal to humans.

Starlings, however, [eat] hemlock.
Ambrose.
Finally, starlings feed on hemlock, nor is it a harm to them, since by the quality of their body they escape the poison of the lethal juice. For the power of that juice is cold, which they reach through thin pores leading to the seat of their heart by a precocious digestion before it attempts the vitals themselves.
The same elsewhere. They say hellebore is the food and nourishment of quails, because by a certain natural temperament of their body they avoid the power of the harmful fodder.

Starlings, moreover, eat hemlock; scammony attracts yellow bile. Colocynth and agaric and white hellebore, and euphorbium and the Gnidian berry [attract] phlegm. Black hellebore and epithyme attract black bile. There are those who restrain the belly with purgatives; and from things that restrain it, they rather rouse and purge it. There are also those who during sailing sharpen the appetite for eating, easily transforming food, ignorant of all the heaviness excited by the sea. I could recount infinite things to you which are known only by experience, which indeed are called "occult properties" by physicians. But that which is occult in each thing has little for which a cause can be rendered. For purgatives badly effect sudden movements [of the bowels] that are very useless and not inspiring confidence. For they say that purgatives attract humors by heat, which is clearly false; for every hot thing ought then to be purgative; yet behold for you pepper, which although it is strong, nevertheless does not have the power of attracting, but of digesting and strengthening. Likewise also mastic and aloe; nor do we say the reasoning is converted in the opposite direction. For we confess every purgative is hot in temperament, but draws out and ejects by power; nor is every hot thing immediately a purgative by any power. They say, moreover, that the ostrich digests iron, not by any property, but rather by heat; which is surely foolish. For since the lion is more fervent than this very animal, yet it does not digest iron. Nor are properties found among physicians alone. Indeed, even among philosophers and grammarians, those things which are called passions or pathe are noted from usage. It is necessary, therefore, to propose those things for questioning which hold a middle place: and for the sake of having knowledge of them, they are not at all ambiguous, but of whatever sort they may be, so that they may be subjected to a solution. Truly, of all things that are said, some are known to all to be false; some...