young Socrates was led to combine efficacy and stability such that the appeal to matter could seemingly at least satisfy both needs at once.
A clear-sighted recognition of this distinction would, on the other hand, call into question the intelligibility that was, as it seemed to the young Socrates, integral to the fundamental matter. In so doing, it would constitute a challenge to one of the two central assumptions on which natural science depends: that “an Atlas” can be discovered or known. For that recognition would have forced the young Socrates to ask, next, what further cause gives rise to—and, in giving rise to, places limits on—the changes or motions to which that material is subject. The changes in that material cannot be limited or fixed as the changes in what is made out of it may be: by virtue of its materials or elements, that is. By definition, that material has none. But what, then, is the source of (its) motion or change? “Through what does this come about, and what is the cause?” (Aristotle Metaphysics 984a21).
With this question, the natural scientists’ search for “an Atlas” comes full circle.7 Carried by its own inner momentum, it has found itself face to face with the very same difficulty that at the outset led the young Socrates, in his account of human growth, to reduce flesh and bone—and, indeed, all things—to some “truly elemental, altogether simple material.” That “truly elemental, altogether simple material” has itself succumbed to the difficulty it was called upon, as a last resort, to dispose of. But to escape from it now is impossible (Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed II.19). With the source of (its) motion or change shrouded in such darkness as this, it cannot be known that, much less what, the fundamental material always is. And so is not the world—whose “cause,” to put it loosely, it is—as unreceptive to the human desire to know as it is reassuring to those who, in keeping with the alternative Hesiod represents, do not so much wish to know as to wonder and hope?
The natural scientists’ assumption or belief that they will “at some time” reach their objective (99c4)—their confidence, that is, in their enterprise as a whole—is sustainable only to the extent that they conceive it confusedly. Their ignorance of their objective lies at the bottom of the vacillation or wavering to which, as we have already seen, they are liable in regard to the nature of the material they seek.
The Primacy of Form
So far Socrates’ second statement has shown that in order to bring about the things, and the changes in the things, as they are already known to us, the fundamental material or being must be changeable in addition, perhaps, to being unchangeable. And to draw this distinction means to acknowledge the possibility that what it is ascribed to is not altogether simple; in the last analysis, even the fundamental materials or elements might not be wholly free from complexity or truly elemental. What we may call the problem of “matter” is clear. Less clear perhaps is the fact that as a necessary consequence of drawing this distinction on the plane of the materials or elements a corresponding distinction emerges, in turn, on the plane of the things made out of them. For, on one hand, the materials or elements—the atoms, let us say—cause the way of being of each thing only by undergoing the different changes—the combinations and separations, let us say—to which they are subject. Neither a human being nor a horse, to say it again, could come to be unless the (same) atoms out of which they are both made undergo some (different) change. On the other hand, it is not only the changes to which they are subject but also the atoms themselves, so far as they are unchangeable, that all things collectively are made out of. All things are subject to a distinction that corresponds to the distinction to which their materials or elements, too, are subject. For although all things are caused in part by what always stays the same about the atoms, if there are atoms, each thing is also caused in part by a distinctive modification of them. And so it would make sense if Socrates’ last two examples were to pick up precisely where his first two left off: by calling attention to this distinction.
Socrates goes on to report that, as a young natural scientist, he supposed he knew, but later unlearned, that ten is more than eight “through” two being added to it and, in the next place, that two cubits is more than one cubit “through” exceeding it by half of itself. These examples prove to follow closely on the heels of the ones pertaining to “the head itself.” For to assume, as the young Socrates did, that ten is bigger than eight “through” two being added to it is to treat two as the material or element that accounts for the way of being of ten—or for ten’s bigness, one of ten’s characteristics. And it is in turn to treat ten and eight as compounds, made out of parts, whose ways of being (or bigness) in relation to one another stem from what, or how many, materials or elements they consist of. But whereas ten is, on this assumption, conceived of as nothing but five twos and eight as four twos, the material or element common to both compounds, the two, is itself conceived of, not as a compound, but rather as a one or a whole. (The materials or elements in terms of which the compounds are to be understood are not themselves understood, in other words, as the compounds are, in terms of their materials or elements, but as being just what, or the way, they are.) It is said in the sequel, however, that two cubits also seemed to the young Socrates to be more than one cubit “through” exceeding the latter by half of itself. And that means two was conceived of by him, just then at least, not as a one or a whole, but rather as a compound, consisting of materials or elements (two ones) of its own.
These examples of “what [Socrates] supposed [he] knew before this” have called attention to a distinction, as we foresaw they would. At the same time, they have called attention to the fact that, as a young natural scientist, he failed to grasp it clearly. He addressed “the two” conceived of both as a compound and as a one or a whole as one and the same thing.8 But there is a difference here, one he himself could not help acknowledging at times. For two’s factors or parts, its ones, apart are not yet two. Two is its parts together. As such, it is not (two) ones—it is just two (once), and nothing more (Aristotle Metaphysics 1020b6–8). Despite this, the young Socrates “supposed [he] knew” that, since two (once) is the same as its (two) ones, it acquires its twoness—or its bigness, one of its characteristics—“through” them. Was “what [he] supposed [he] knew” not dependent then on his failure to grasp clearly the very distinction that his presentation of that “knowledge” here has just encouraged us to draw?
While that may be, the young Socrates’ inexactness about number, though notable in its way, could be said to be neither here nor there. And rightly so perhaps, were it not for this. As the context shows, the distinction at issue here—between the number two and its parts—embodies the distinction between the way of being, or the form, of each thing and what, as its matter, underlies it. What is therefore indicated by the fact that the young Socrates blurred the distinction between two and its parts is that he blurred the distinction between the way of being or form and matter generally. Had he not done so, would one of the two central assumptions on which natural science depends—namely, that the way of being or form of each thing is supplied by its matter—not have lost the intelligibility it was believed by him to possess?
That assumption, we recall, had as its necessary consequence the view that form is reducible to matter or that somehow something’s form is, or is the same as, its matter. It implied, in other words, the very refusal to recognize fully the way in which form has a distinct existence of its own that we earlier found so striking. It lost sight of the fact that something’s form is not, or is different from, its matter. That the young Socrates insisted on viewing ten (once) as nothing but (five) twos and two (once) as nothing but (two) ones was, it turns out, merely an expression of this assumption. As he has just revealed, however, he could not consistently maintain this insistence. His view that ten (once) is its (five) twos was contradicted by his view that two (once) is its (two) ones. For each of the (five) twos that ten (once) is reduced to is itself not a compound, but is, as two (once), a one or a whole in its own right. As a young natural scientist, then, Socrates must have thought that something’s form is, all at once, both the same as and different from its matter. But what was the unavoidable ground of his confusion?
If
