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Acknowledgments
This volume derives from an international conference organized by Frederik Bakker, Delphine Bellis, and Carla Rita Palmerino and held at Radboud University, Nijmegen, on June 9–10, 2016. The event was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through Delphine Bellis’ Veni grant (275-20-042) and by the International Office of Radboud University.
We would also like to acknowledge the financial support we received for the publication of this book through the translation subsidy fund of the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at Radboud University, as well as through the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) with Delphine Bellis’ postdoctoral project (12O6516N).
We would like to express our gratitude to Bill Duba for the translation into English of Olivier Ribordy’s chapter, to Hester van den Elzen for preparing the index, and to Anke Timmermann (A T Scriptorium) for the particular care and proficiency with which she conducted the copy-editing of the volume.
1 Space, Imagination and the Cosmos, from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period: Introduction
Frederik A. Bakker, Delphine Bellis, and Carla Rita Palmerino
2 Aristotle’s Account of Place in Physics 4: Some Puzzles and Some Reactions
Keimpe Algra
A. Bakker 4 Space and Movement in Medieval Thought: The Angelological
7 Francisco Suárez and Francesco Patrizi:
Giordano Bruno’s
Á. Granada
9 Libert Froidmont’s Conception and Imagination of Space in Three Early Works: Peregrinatio cœlestis (1616), De cometa (1618), Meteorologica (1627) 179
Isabelle Pantin
10 Questioning Fludd, Kepler and Galileo: Mersenne’s Harmonious Universe
Natacha Fabbri
11 Imaginary Spaces and Cosmological Issues in Gassendi’s Philosophy
Delphine Bellis
12 Space, Imagination and the Cosmos in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence
Carla Rita Palmerino
Correction to: The End of Epicurean Infinity: Critical Reflections on the Epicurean Infinite Universe C1
Contributors
Keimpe Algra University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Frederik A. Bakker Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Delphine Bellis Department of Philosophy, Paul Valéry University, Montpellier, France
William O. Duba Institut d’Études Médiévales, Université de Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Natacha Fabbri Galileo Museum, Institute and Museum for the History of Science, Florence, Italy
Miguel Ángel Granada University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Carla Rita Palmerino Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Isabelle Pantin Ecole Normale Supérieure – PSL Research University, Paris, France
Olivier Ribordy University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Aurélien Robert Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, CNRS, Université de Tours, Tours, France
Tiziana Suarez-Nani University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Chapter 1 Space, Imagination and the Cosmos, from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period: Introduction
Frederik A. Bakker, Delphine Bellis, and Carla Rita Palmerino
Abstract In this introduction, we explain our choice to approach the topic of space from a cosmological perspective, that is, by studying the conceptions of space that were implicitly or explicitly entailed by ancient, medieval and early modern representations of the cosmos, and the role that imagination played in those conceptions. We compare our approach with those of Alexandre Koyré and Edward Grant, and we present the two important issues this book intends to shed light on, namely the continuity and discontinuity between ancient, medieval, and early modern conceptions of space and the cosmos; and the role that metaphysical, cosmological, and theological considerations played in the elaboration of new theories of space in the course of history. This chapter also presents the main, recurring themes of this book: the relation between place and space; the notion of imaginary spaces; the role played by thought experiments in discussions concerning the nature of space and the structure of the cosmos; the impact of the condemnation of 1277 on subsequent theories of space; and the relation between God’s immensity and the infinity of space.
Since antiquity space has been the object of metaphysical and physical enquiry. If space is the framework in which whatever exists is located, in what sense can space itself then be said to exist? Is it a substance or an accident? Does it exist independently of the objects contained in it? Can a part of space be emptied of matter? And are space and time isomorphic magnitudes? These questions have also had a bearing on cosmological speculations. Issues such as the origin and structure of the world, the infinity or finiteness of the universe, or the possibility of a plurality of worlds, could not be dealt with without addressing the question of the nature of space. As
F. A. Bakker (*) · C. R. Palmerino
Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
e-mail: f.bakker@ftr.ru.nl; c.palmerino@ftr.ru.nl
D. Bellis
Department of Philosophy, Paul Valéry University, Montpellier, France
F. A. Bakker et al. (eds.), Space, Imagination and the Cosmos from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 48, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02765-0_1
Milič Čapek insightfully noticed, a concept (like Aristotle’s) of the universe as enclosed within boundaries marked the limits of the universe also as being “the limits of space, not in space.”1
In this book, we approach the topic of space from a cosmological perspective, by studying the conceptions of space that were implicitly or explicitly entailed by ancient, medieval and early modern representations of the cosmos, and we examine the role of imagination in those conceptions.2 Indeed, the acts of conceiving of space as being independent of body, extending indefinitely or infinitely beyond the limits of the cosmos or beyond our perception of the cosmos, and of contemplating the relations space could have with divine immensity, often entailed specific cognitive operations involving, in one way or another, imagination. With contributions on periods from antiquity to the early eighteenth century, this book intends to shed light on two important issues:
1. The first one is the continuity and discontinuity between ancient, medieval, and early modern conceptions of space and of the cosmos. In his groundbreaking study, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Alexandre Koyré focused on the link that, according to him, existed between the destruction of the ancient cosmos initiated by Renaissance astronomers and the “geometrization of space,” that is “the substitution of the homogeneous and abstract space of Euclidean geometry for the qualitatively differentiated and concrete world-space conception of pre-Galilean physics.”3 As one of the first proponents of the idea of the Scientific Revolution Koyré found it important to stress that early modern cosmology constituted an essential break with ancient and medieval representations of the world. Admittedly, Koyré acknowledged that the Epicureans had already advocated the conception of an infinite universe, but claimed that their theories did not play a major role in the forging of the Scientific Revolution. Although persuasively argued, Koyré’s view does not do justice to the scientific and philosophical lines of influence that ran from antiquity to the early modern period. To take but one example, it is indicative of Koyré’s biased approach that he downplayed the importance of Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) for the history of the theories of space and the cosmos. It turns out, however, that Gassendi, who explicitly acknowledged his debt towards Epicureanism and other ancient sources, played a crucial role in promoting the idea of a cosmos deprived of any boundary, and of space as an entity independent from all other beings. Even if some research has been done to reassess Koyré’s picture, an important part of existing scholarship still isolates the early modern period from its ancient and medieval background.4 By bringing together contributions on ancient, medieval,
1 Čapek 1976, xxi.
2 For a broader approach in terms of disciplines see Vermeir and Regier 2016, whose edited volume embraces not only cosmological approaches to space, but also perceptual, optical, geographical, and chemical uses of spatial concepts.
3 Koyré 1957, viii.
4 See for example Mamiani 1979; Peterschmitt 2013; Miller 2014. For an approach that covers the period from the 12th to the 16th centuries, and a closer approximation to the aims of this book, see Suarez-Nani, Ribordy and Petagine 2017. See also Grant 1981, although he focuses on Aristotelian
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1 Space, Imagination and the Cosmos, from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period…
and early modern philosophy and science this book intends to produce a historically more accurate picture of the variety of philosophical and scientific theories of space in the period under consideration.5
2. The second issue addressed in this volume is the role which metaphysical, cosmological, and theological considerations played in the elaboration of new theories of space throughout history. In his fundamental work, Much Ado about Nothing, Edward Grant stressed the remarkable continuity between scholastic and non-scholastic theories of space, and argued that “the concepts and arguments that were instrumental in the historical development of theories of space and the vacuum […] form a remarkably cohesive and independent tradition that was virtually immune to social, political, economic, educational and religious change.”6 One of our aims is to put this interpretation to the test. As several chapters in this volume document, natural philosophers addressing cosmological questions often saw themselves forced to reshape their metaphysical conception of space, as well as the ontological categories into which space could fit.7 Conversely, metaphysical and theological concerns deeply influenced the way in which both scholastic and non-scholastic natural philosophers dealt with cosmological issues.8 Take for example the concept of an infinite, extra-cosmic void space that, as Grant notes, the scholastics identified with God’s immensity.9 In our view this concept was appropriated and modified by early modern authors not in spite of, but thanks to its theological underpinnings. Amos Funkenstein has already insisted on the intimate connection between physical and theological arguments by stressing the emergence of a specific type of secular theology in the seventeenth century. Central to this theology was the issue of God’s omnipresence, which became “an almost physical problem for some.”10 As Funkenstein points out, “continuity and innovation” are not “mutually exclusive predicates.”11 Concepts inherited from antiquity or the Middle Ages (like the Stoic extra-cosmic void or the scholastic imaginary spaces) could be appropriated and reshaped in order to produce new conceptions of space and the cosmos. We consider Funkenstein’s approach particularly fruitful, especially insofar as it emphasizes and scholastic influences in the early modern period and somewhat neglects the import of other traditions such as Epicureanism. Albert Einstein, in his foreword to Max Jammer’s Concepts of Space, insists on the lineage between ancient atomist theories and Newton’s absolute space: Jammer 1954, xv. See also Čapek 1976, xx, xxiii.
5 Although its scope is broader, as it is not solely focused on space, Machamer and Turnbull 1976 can be seen as an attempt, albeit somewhat tentative, to address related topics, in terms of a longterm integrated history and philosophy of science.
6 Grant 1981, xii.
7 On a mostly metaphysical approach to the topic in the early modern period, see Peterschmitt 2013.
8 This was already noted by Max Jammer, although his approach centered on the relations between the concept of space and investigations in physics: Jammer 1954, vi, 2, 25–50.
9 Grant 1981, xi.
10 Quotation from Funkenstein 1986, 10. On God’s omnipresence see ibid., 23–116.
11 Ibid., 14.
the specific role that imagination came to play in speculations which were at the same time cosmological, philosophical, and theological. However, we do not share Funkenstein’s view that medieval speculations on space and God’s immensity, as well as medieval imaginary experiments related to the creation of possible worlds in extra-cosmic space, were of a purely theological nature.12 As we hope to show in this volume, it was not only in the seventeenth century, but also in the ancient and medieval period, that theological, metaphysical, physical, and cosmological considerations converged to produce reflections on space.
In his book Representing Space in the Scientific Revolution David M. Miller, while adopting a part of Koyré’s framework of the Scientific Revolution, pleads for a shift in research from a metaphysics of space to an epistemology of space.13 He embraces an interpretative approach centered on physical theories from Copernicus to Newton, and on the implicit representative framework they involve, rather than on the philosophical speculations bearing on the ontology of space. His claim is that the period from Copernicus to Newton is characterized by a crucial shift in the scientific representations of space, from a circular, center-oriented, anisotropic space to a rectilinear, isotropic space with a self-parallel orientation. Miller thus advocates a new focus on representations and conceptions of space that constitute the explicit or implicit background of early modern scientific theories. We believe that such an approach, which tightly links the history of science with the conceptual analysis of the notion of space, is particularly fruitful and can be extended to a wider historical scale. However, isolating scientific practices and theories from their philosophical context does not do justice to the actual intertwinement of science and philosophy which runs throughout the history of Western thought, at least up to the eighteenth century. Our approach therefore consists in tackling cosmological issues as an indissolubly scientific, theological, and philosophical unit. As a consequence, the various contributions to this book not only deal with an explicit metaphysics of space, but also address the conceptual function that space played in scientific and theological reflections.
In this introduction we shall not provide a summary of the individual chapters, as they are all preceded by an abstract. We shall rather try to shed light on a number of specific topics, apart from the two main themes discussed above, which link the various contributions to this book.
An issue which is addressed in most chapters is the relation between place, conceived as the location of individual substances, and space. From Keimpe Algra’s chapter we learn that there were three rival conceptions of place in antiquity. According to the first view, which goes back to Plato’s Timaeus, place can be identified with the extension of the located body. The second conception is found in Aristotle’s Physics 4, 1–5, where place is defined as the “first immobile limit of the surrounding body.” The third view was defended by Epicurus and the Stoics, according to whom place must be conceived as an independent three-dimensional
12 See, for example, ibid., 63.
13 Miller 2014, 1–2, 19–20.
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portion of space, coextensive with the emplaced body. Most ancient commentators endorsed Aristotle’s position and stressed that the notion of a self-subsistent threedimensional extension which is neither an accident nor a substance was ontologically untenable. There were, however, also commentators like Philoponus who, “in the face of the strong arguments in favour of the existence of space as a threedimensional extension,” concluded that “there is something wrong with the Aristotelian ontology, in particular with the idea that a quantity cannot subsist by itself” (Algra p. 24).
In the medieval period Aristotle’s treatment of place also gave rise to interesting discussions. The chapters by Aurélien Robert, William Duba, and Tiziana SuarezNani show that fourteenth-century philosophers had various reasons to depart from Aristotle’s notion of place. Robert’s article draws attention to the connection between the theory of place and atomism. It shows that Wyclif, like other fourteenthcentury atomists, identified place with a three-dimensional space composed of surfaces, lines and points. According to Robert, this theory was based on a Neopythagorean interpretation of Plato’s theory of place in the Timaeus. Duba’s chapter explains how fourteenth-century philosophers dealt with a paradoxical consequence of Aristotle’s notion of place, namely the fact that it is possible for a thing (e.g. a boat) to remain at rest while the surrounding body (e.g. the water of a river) moves. John Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol and Nicholas Bonet were not satisfied with Aristotle’s own solution to the problem of mobile place (sketched out in section 6 of Algra’s article) and proposed alternative views that relied on a distinction between a physical, a metaphysical, and a mathematical meaning of place. Suarez-Nani’s chapter documents that medieval theories of place and space were strongly dependent on metaphysical and theological reflections. Fourteenth-century thinkers found the Aristotelian notion of place inadequate to account for the localization of immaterial substances, and conceived of place as a “mathematical position” (Henry of Ghent) or as a “mathematical quantity” (John Duns Scotus), rather than as a physical property (Suarez-Nani p. 76). Early modern scholastics such as Francisco Suárez also dealt with the localization of immaterial substances. As Olivier Ribordy explains, Suárez rejected Aristotle’s definition of place in Physics IV in favor of a notion of ubi as an intrinsic mode which could be used to account for the localization of both corporeal and spiritual creatures. The notion of ubi intrinsecus made it also possible to assign a place to the universe, which according to Aristotle’s definition is located nowhere, as there is no body surrounding it. Ribordy’s chapter also deals with Francesco Patrizi, whose account of space and place bears interesting similarities with that of Giordano Bruno (discussed in Miguel Ángel Granada’s article) and Pierre Gassendi (which is the object of Delphine Bellis’ contribution). Patrizi and Bruno, both influenced by Philoponus, conceived of place as a threedimensional physical quantity capable of receiving bodies. Moreover, both Patrizi and Bruno took issue with Aristotle’s ontology, according to which a threedimensional extension can only be an attribute of corporeal bodies. Bruno argued that space “is incorporeal, but has dimensions,” whereas Patrizi defined space as a “corporeal non-body” and “incorporeal body.” It is well known that Patrizi’s conception of space as a three-dimensional extension which transcends the catego1 Space, Imagination and the Cosmos,
ries of substance and accident strongly influenced Pierre Gassendi. Less well-known is the fact that Gassendi also drew inspiration from scholastic theories of space. As Delphine Bellis’ chapter shows, it was thanks to a re-elaboration of the scholastic notion of ‘imaginary space’ that Gassendi came to regard space as an “incorporeal entity,” thereby removing “the ontological confusion between space and body that still pervaded Patrizi’s theory” (Bellis p. 246). Bellis speaks of “re-elaboration” because Gassendi identified imaginary space with the three-dimensional extracosmic void, whereas scholastic authors such as Suárez and the Conimbricenses regarded it as a non-dimensional, virtual place capable of being filled by bodies (Bellis p. 233).
From Isabelle Pantin’s, Natacha Fabbri’s and Carla Rita Palmerino’s chapters we learn that the expression ‘imaginary space’ also figures, albeit with different meanings, in Libert Froidmont’s Peregrinatio caelestis (1616), Marin Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle (1636–1637) and in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (1715–1716). When Froidmont speaks of light elements spreading through imaginary spaces it is not clear, according to Pantin, whether he wants to endorse, or rather reject, the Stoic notion of an infinite extra-cosmic void. Mersenne maintains, following Duns Scotus, that an ‘imaginary space’ would survive if God ceased to conserve bodies. The existence of an extra-cosmic void space is one of the many points of disagreement between Leibniz and Clarke. While Leibniz takes the adjective ‘imaginary’ to mean ‘non-existent,’ Clarke stresses that the ancients use the adjective ‘imaginary’ to refer to an extramundane space which is real, but not accessible to our knowledge.
As several chapters in this volume document, extra-cosmic space was often made the theater of thought experiments. The most famous and influential example is that of the man at the edge of the universe who tries to extend his hand. This scenario, which was originally invoked by the Pythagorean philosopher Archytas to deny the finitude of the universe, reappears time and again in the history of ancient, medieval, and early modern philosophy.14 Frederik Bakker explains how Lucretius, in his De rerum natura, proposed a modified version of Archytas’ thought experiment in order to prove that the universe is unbounded. The De rerum natura was, in turn, a source of inspiration for Giordano Bruno. As Granada recalls, in the introductory epistle of De l’infinito, Bruno used the Lucretian thought experiment to argue for the existence of an extra-cosmic space filled with other worlds. The scenario of the man at the edge of the universe also plays an important role in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, where it is used to criticize the Cartesian identification of matter and extension. Palmerino explores why Leibniz in his New Essays, which were written in response to Locke’s Essay, chose not to deal with this famous thought experiment. A substantial part of Palmerino’s article is devoted to another thought experiment which, as Algra’s chapter reveals, was first discussed by the Stoic Cleomedes. In his Caelestia Cleomedes imagined that the whole cosmos moved in an empty space. Such a scenario, which was of course incompatible with the principles of Aristotle’s cosmology, reappears in a number of fourteenth-century
14 Ierodiakonou 2011.
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1 Space, Imagination and the Cosmos, from Antiquity to the Early
philosophical works. As Algra, Duba, Bellis, and Palmerino recall, the medieval revival of the thought experiment is a consequence of the famous condemnation promulgated in 1277 by the bishop of Paris Étienne Tempier, which prohibited Parisian professors from teaching that God could not move the heavens in a straight line. Palmerino’s article documents how the Newtonian theologian Samuel Clarke used this medieval thought experiment to challenge Leibniz’s theory of space. Incidentally, the condemnation of 1277, just as the reaction of Church authorities to heliocentrism which is mentioned in Pantin’s and Bellis’ chapters, provides a good example of how a historical episode could influence the way in which natural philosophers dealt with cosmological issues.
A thought experiment discussed in other chapters of the book consists of imagining what would happen if God annihilated the created bodies or ceased to conserve them. Aurélien Robert recalls that the Council of Constance condemned Wyclif for holding, among other things, that “God cannot annihilate, diminish or increase the world,”15 whereas Bellis provides details of a number of medieval, late scholastic and early modern authors who discussed the scenario of the annihilatio mundi. Interestingly most of these authors agreed that the annihilation of the world would lead to the formation of a vacuum of some sort, but disagreed as to whether the world was created in a pre-existing space. As Delphine Bellis points out, most fourteenth-century philosophers argued, in accordance with the condemnation of 1277, that the existence of a void space was not a necessary precondition for the creation of the world. Fabbri’s chapter reveals that a similar position was endorsed by Marin Mersenne who, following Duns Scotus, denied the existence of an empty space prior to the creation of bodies, while claiming that an ‘imaginary space’ would survive if God ceased to conserve bodies. Patrizi, Gassendi and Roberval, by contrast, invoked the annihilatio mundi thought experiment in support of the view that space is an independent three-dimensional extension which exists prior to the creation of the world (see Ribordy for Patrizi, Bellis and Fabbri for Roberval, and Bellis for Gassendi).
The influence of the condemnation of 1277 on theories of space was not limited to the two cases mentioned above. Tempier’s decree prohibited the teaching of the theory that angels were not located in space, or that they were located only by their operation. As Suarez-Nani explains, many authors writing in the wake of the condemnation “conceived the relationship to physical place as a necessary and intrinsic condition of all creatures, both material and immaterial” (Suarez-Nani pp. 74–75). Also very influential was the article of the condemnation which stated that God could create as many worlds as he pleased. While most thirteenth-century natural philosophers endorsed Aristotle’s proof of the unicity of our world, authors writing after the condemnation regarded the existence of a plurality of worlds as possible according to God’s absolute power (de potentia Dei absoluta). But this view had, of course, ancient roots: as Bakker shows, the ancient atomists – first Democritus and later Epicurus and his followers – already maintained that the infinite expanse of extra-cosmic space also contains an infinity of atoms, which in turn gives rise to an
15 [Councils] 1973, 426.
infinite number of worlds. The step from infinite atoms to infinite worlds was justified with reference to the so-called principle of plenitude: given the infinity of time and space, everything that is possible (like a world) will be actualized, and not just once, but an infinite number of times. However, while for most authors writing after the condemnation of 1277 the plurality of worlds was only a possibility, and necessary to avoid limiting God’s power, for Bruno it was a reality: defending the infinity of space and invoking the principle of plenitude as well as God’s infinite goodness, Bruno concluded that infinite space not only contains an infinity of worlds but is, in fact, always and everywhere completely filled with informed matter (Granada pp. 163–164). As Fabbri explains, this view was criticized by Mersenne, who adopted a voluntaristic stance: God could have created an infinite universe, but this does not mean that he should have created it (Fabbri p. 213). A similar position was also adopted by Gassendi; while accepting the Epicurean argument for the infinity of space, and admitting that “the infinity of worlds could not be excluded on purely logical or physical grounds,” (Bellis p. 239) for theological reasons he preferred to adhere to the uniqueness of our world (Bellis pp. 239 and 244). The tension between an intellectualist and a voluntarist stance is particularly evident in the correspondence between Leibniz and Clarke. When Leibniz invokes the principle of sufficient reason to argue in favor of the indefiniteness of the world, Clarke retorts that sufficient reason is sometimes nothing else than God’s will, and that divine wisdom may have good reasons for limiting the quantity of created matter (Palmerino pp. 262–263 and 265).
Finally there is the issue of the relation between God’s immensity and the infinity of space. In her article Suarez-Nani relates that the fourteenth-century philosopher John of Ripa “introduced a radical distinction between God’s immensity and spatial infinity that began to haunt natural philosophy” (Suarez-Nani pp. 71–72). Ripa’s stance was analyzed at length by Paul Vignaux, who is mentioned in Suarez-Nani’s article, and by Edward Grant. In his Much Ado about Nothing Edward Grant notices that “to identify imaginary, infinite space with God’s immensity and also to assign dimensionality to that space would have implied that God Himself was an actual extended, corporeal being.” Grants observes that this stance, which was adopted by Spinoza and Newton, “would have been completely unacceptable in medieval and early modern scholasticism.”16 This explains, in Grant’s view, why those medieval authors who identified God’s immensity with infinite space, thereby denying the creation of space, described the latter as non-dimensional. Elsewhere in his book Grant observes that “the medieval fear that void space would be interpreted as an eternal, uncreated positive entity independent of God was realized in the metaphysics of Giordano Bruno,” who regarded infinite space “as coeternal with but wholly independent of God.”17 Granada’s article explicitly challenges Grant’s interpretation and shows that Bruno anticipated Spinoza in conflating God, extension, matter, and space. With this volume we do not intend to cover all dimensions of the relations between spatiality, cosmology, and the imagination involved in their conception.
16 Grant 1981, 164.
17 Ibid., 191.
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However, we hope to have offered some results which can be gained through a longue-durée approach in combination with scrupulous and close textual analysis, and thereby to foster similar collaborative work on space between scholars specialized in different periods of the history of philosophy and science.
References
Čapek, Milič, ed. 1976. The Concepts of Space and Time: Their Structure and their Development Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
[Councils]. 1973. Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo et al., 3rd ed. Bologna: Istituto per le scienze religiose.
Funkenstein, Amos. 1986. Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Grant, Edward. 1981. Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ierodiakonou, Katerina. 2011. Remarks on The History of an Ancient Thought Experiment. In Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts, ed. Katerina Ierodiakonou and Sophie Roux, 35–49. Leiden: Brill.
Jammer, Max. 1954. Concepts of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Koyré, Alexandre. 1957. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.
Machamer, Peter K., and Robert G. Turnbull, eds. 1976. Motion and Time: Space and Matter Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Mamiani, Maurizio. 1979. Teorie dello spazio da Descartes a Newton. Milan: Franco Angeli. Miller, David Marshall. 2014. Representing Space in the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peterschmitt, Luc, ed. 2013. Espace et métaphysique de Gassendi à Kant: Anthologie. Paris: Hermann.
Suarez-Nani, Tiziana, Olivier Ribordy, and Antonio Petagine, eds. 2017. Lieu, espace, mouvement: Physique, métaphysique et cosmologie (XIIe–XVIe siècles). Barcelona: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales.
Vermeir, Koen, and Jonathan Regier, eds. 2016. Boundaries, Extents and Circulations: Space and Spatiality in Early Modern Natural Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer.
Chapter 2 Aristotle’s Account of Place in Physics 4: Some Puzzles and Some Reactions
Keimpe Algra
Abstract This contribution focuses on Aristotle’s account of place (not: space) as it is developed in Physics 4, 1–5, a difficult text which has proved to be both influential and a source of problems and discussions in the ancient and medieval Aristotelian tradition. The article starts out by briefly positioning this account within the Corpus Aristotelicum, within the later ancient and medieval Aristotelian tradition, and within the tradition of theories of place and space in general. It goes on to examine the argument of Phys. 4, 1–5, showing that proper attention to Aristotle’s dialectical procedure is crucial for a correct understanding and evaluation of the various claims that we find scattered throughout his text. It then zooms in on the most important questions, problems and loose ends with which Aristotle’s theory confronted his commentators (ancient, medieval and modern): the puzzling arguments for the rejection of the rival conception of place as an independent threedimensional extension (and of the void); the supposed role of Aristotelian places in the explanation of motion; the supposed role of Aristotelian natural places in the explanation of natural motion; the problem of the required immobility of Aristotelian places; and the problem of the emplacement of the heavens.
2.1 Introduction: Aristotle’s Account in Context
This paper offers a synthesizing discussion of Aristotle’s ‘classic’ account of place, as the “first immobile limit of the surrounding body,” as it is worked out in Physics 4, 1–5, and of the main problems with which this account has saddled its interpreters in antiquity and beyond.1 In passing, we will also be able to cast occasional
1 Although this paper offers a fresh, synthesizing perspective, it covers a number of items which I have discussed, sometimes at greater length and in more detail, in earlier publications as well. Inevitably, therefore, there will be some overlap (from slight to considerable) with my earlier work, in particular with Algra 1995 in Sections 2.1 and 2.5, and with Algra 2014 in Sections 2.3, 2.4, 2.6 and 2.7
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glances at how this text relates to some other parts of the Physics (in particular the discussion of the void in Physics 4, 6–9 and the discussion of the dynamics of natural motion in Physics 8), as well as to some other texts from the Corpus Aristotelicum (most notably the Categories).
Aristotle’s account of place in Physics 4 has had a long and varied reception history. It started with the early Peripatetics Eudemus of Rhodes and Theophrastus of Eresus. Eudemus’ Physics basically appears to have been a paraphrasing commentary that preserved the sequence of subjects of Aristotle’s work, whereas Theophrastus’ similarly entitled treatise was more of an independent work.2 From the fragments of these two works, preserved by Simplicius, it appears that they both critically discussed Aristotle’s account of place, albeit without straightforwardly rejecting it. Strato of Lampsacus, however, who succeeded Theophrastus as head of the Lyceum, did in fact reject it and opted instead for the conception of place as a three-dimensional extension.3 Sympathy for the latter conception can also be detected in the testimonies on the work of the first century BC Peripatetic Xenarchus of Seleucia, whom we know to have defused Peripatetic arguments against the Stoic conception of the (extracosmic) void.4 Aristotle’s conception of place was further discussed and criticized by other philosophers in the Hellenistic and early Imperial periods, perhaps most notably by the sceptic Sextus Empiricus at the end of the second century AD.5
The account of Physics 4, 1–5 first became ‘classical’ in later antiquity when the Corpus Aristotelicum, of which the Physics was a prominent part, had become canonized and integrated into the standard philosophical curriculum. In order to be able to function in such a context the Physics, like other difficult Aristotelian texts, had to be opened up and explained in exegetical paraphrases (Themistius) and commentaries (Alexander of Aphrodisias, Simplicius, Philoponus).6 The same goes for the subsequent practice of the study of Aristotle in the medieval Islamic world: we still
2 On the character of Eudemus’ work, see Gottschalk 2002 and Sharples 2002. On Theophrastus’ work and the nature of his Aristotelianism, see Gottschalk 1998 and Sharples 1998. Their reactions to Aristotle’s theory of place are discussed in more detail in Algra 2014, 25–29 (Eudemus) and 29–38 (Theophrastus).
3 On Strato in general see the edition by Sharples (2011) and the studies collected in Desclos and Fortenbaugh 2011. On his theory of space and void, see Algra 2014, 38–42.
4 On the evidence on Xenarchus on the void, see Algra 2014, 42–47. For the Stoic conception of extracosmic void see Section 3.2 of Bakker’s Chapter 3 in this volume.
5 On the discussion of place in Sextus Empiricus, also in relation to the text of Physics 4, see Algra, 2015
6 English translations of the commentaries on Physics 4 by Themistius, Simplicius and Philoponus are available in Richard Sorabji’s invaluable series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. For Themistius, see Todd 2003; for Philoponus, see Furley and Wildberg 1991 and Algra and Van Ophuijsen 2012; for Simplicius, see Urmson 1992 and Urmson and Siorvanes 1992. Alexander’s commentary is no longer extant. Fragments are discussed and a reconstruction attempted in Rashed 2011. On the later ancient commentary tradition, in general and in relation to the school practice, see Sorabji 1990. Some of the most important passages on (Aristotle’s conception of) place from the ancient commentary tradition have been conveniently collected and translated, with brief introductions, in Sorabji 2004, 226–243. Much of this material has been discussed at greater length in Sorabji 1988, esp. 125–218.
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2 Aristotle’s Account of Place in Physics 4: Some Puzzles and Some Reactions
have commentaries on the Physics by, among others, Ibn Bajja (Avempace) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). It goes for the world of Latin late medieval scholasticism as well, where the Physics was discussed in commentaries and series of quaestiones by Thomas Aquinas, John Buridan, William Ockham and others.7 Part of the ancient reception of Aristotle’s conception of place had been critical – apart from Strato and Xenarchus, already referred to, we should in particular mention John Philoponus (sixth century AD), who offered a sustained critique in the so-called Corollary on Place, inserted in his commentary on Physics 4, while the commentary of his nearcontemporary Simplicius is quite critical as well.8 On the whole, however, the Arabic and Latin commentators in the Middle Ages basically appear to have attempted to defend Aristotle’s account of place and to work out solutions for the problems it raised. Its strong presence in the late scholastic tradition may partly explain its rather surprising reappearance, in the guise of the concept of locus externus, in Descartes’ Principia Philosophiae (II, 14), published in 1644.9 Also in more recent times Aristotle’s theory of place has kept attracting the attention of philosophers. Henri Bergson, for example, devoted his dissertation to it.10 In a more recent and much more ambitious monograph on the subject Ben Morison put up a lively defense and even claimed that the theory is “of enduring philosophical interest.”11 Those who are into postmodern feminist interpretations may enjoy the ‘total makeover’ offered by Luce Irigaray (“The female sex organ is neither matter nor form but vessel” – and so on).12
Back to Aristotle’s text. In so far as the account of Phys. 4, 1–5 is about the location of individual substances rather than about a system of such locations, it presents us with a theory of place rather than space 13 If we count out the specific metaphysical conceptions of space or place defended in late antiquity – in which place or space figures as a channel, so to speak, through which being, order and unity are conveyed to the physical world in a process of emanation from higher principles –and confine ourselves to conceptions of physical place, we may see that in antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, such conceptions basi-
7 For the reception of the Physics in the Arabic world, see Lettink 1994. For the Latin medieval tradition of interpreting Aristotle’s account of place (and his critical account of the void that follows), see Grant 1981a, b
8 A translation of Philoponus commentary on Physics 4, 1-5 is available in Algra and Van Ophuijsen 2012. The philosophically more significant Corollary on Place has been translated separately by Furley and Wildberg 1991. On the relation between the Corollary and the commentary proper, see Algra 2012. Simplicius’s Corollary on Place is available in translation in Urmson and Siorvanes 1992
9 Text quoted and discussed in Algra 1995, 17, n15.
10 Bergson 1889, a shortish and mainly paraphrasing study.
11 Morison 2002. “Enduring philosophical interest” is a quote from the somewhat over-excited blurb text.
12 The quotation is from Irigaray 1998, 48 (English translation of a chapter from her 1983 Éthique de la différence sexuelle).
13 On concepts of place versus concepts of space see see Algra 1995, 20–21.
cally came in three types.14 Place could be identified with matter, or the extension of the emplaced body itself (a view that can be found in Plato’s Timaeus, certainly as it was read by Aristotle15; another instance is Descartes’ notion of locus internus); or with an independent extension (or part of space) coextensive with the located body, in which bodies are located and through which they can move (Epicurus, Newton); or place could be defined in terms of a body’s surroundings, either by identifying it as a surrounding something (as in the case of Aristotle: a surrounding surface) or by defining it as the relation between the emplaced thing and its surroundings (a view suggested as an alternative to Aristotle’s by his pupil Theophrastus, and famously defended by Leibniz in his correspondence with Clarke).
Unlike modern physics, early modern and pre-modern physics was still to a considerable extent moored in common sense ways of thinking and speaking about reality. And indeed, all three main conceptions of place just outlined are in their own way rooted in the way spatial concepts are used in ordinary thinking and speaking. We may be said to use the first, when we say that a thing ‘occupies so and so much room.’ After all, we are, then, in fact focusing on the thing’s own extension, the extension of its matter, and not necessarily implying that the room ‘occupied’ exists in its own right. We use the second when we are talking about things moving ‘through space’ (their place then being the part of space they occupy at any given moment). And we use the third conception, defining location in terms of surroundings, when we say that a fish is swimming ‘in’ the water or that I am presently ‘in’ the city of Utrecht. Aristotle acknowledges as much when he claims that the difficulty of arriving at a coherent theory of place is precisely due to the fact that the phainomena from which physics should take its start – and which for Aristotle famously include the ways in which we ordinarily speak and think about reality –point in different directions.16 He does so right at the start of his account:
Text 1. The question what place is, is beset with difficulties. For it does not appear as the same thing, according as we consider the matter on the basis of the various available data (Phys. 4, 208a32-34).17
14 This threefold typology is further worked out, with references to the relevant texts, in Algra 1995, 15–22. What I here call ‘metaphysical’ conceptions of place or space can be found in the works of some Neoplatonists of late antiquity: Iamblichus, Proclus, Syrianus, Damascius, Simplicius. They all somehow connect place or space with form, causation and creation (dêmiourgia). This is consistent with the Neoplatonic tendency to claim that the lower hypostases are somehow ‘in’ the higher and formative ones. Thus Iamblichus can claim that place is a power that “sustains bodies and holds them apart, raising up those that have fallen [i.e. disintegrated into prime matter, KA] and uniting those that are scattered, filling them up and surrounding them on every side” (Iamblichus ap. Simplicium In Phys. 640, 2–6). On these theories, see Sambursky 1982, 11–29; Sorabji 1988, 202–215, with comments in Algra 1992, 157–162.
15 Cf. Phys. 4, 209b11-13: “That is why Plato in the Timaeus says that matter and space (χώρα) are the same thing.” On ancient and modern interpretations of the receptacle of the Timaeus as either space or matter (or both), and on Aristotle’s critique, see Algra 1995, 72–120.
16 On Aristotle’s (dialectical) method in his Physics, see the seminal paper by Owen 1961; a more detailed discussion in Algra 1995, 153–181.
17 Translations throughout this paper are my own, unless otherwise indicated. Of course I have benefitted from consulting existing standard translations, such as Hussey 1983 and Waterfield and Bostock 1996 for Aristotle’s Physics
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He is even more explicit in chapter 4, in a passage in which we recognize our three main conceptions of place, with the identification of place as form added as a fourth possibility (I have numbered the four candidates (i)–(iv))18:
Text 2. Place seems to be something profound and difficult to grasp, both because the notions of (i) matter and (ii) form present themselves together with it (παρεμφαίνεσθαι), and because of the fact that change of position of a moving body occurs within a surrounding body which is at rest; for [from this] it appears to be possible (ἐνδέχεσθαι γὰρ φαίνεται) that there is (iii) an extension in between which is something other than the magnitudes which move. Air, too, contributes to this suggestion, by appearing to be incorporeal; place seems (φαίνεται) to be not only (iv) the limits of the vessel, but also (iii) that which is in between, which is considered as being void (Phys. 4, 212a7-30).
According to the methodology laid out in the first chapter of Physics 1, the philosopher, in his search for the principles of nature, should start out with “what is more intelligible to us,” i.e. the phainomena, in order to arrive at these principles, which are what is “more intelligible in itself.”.19 However, in the present case, or so Aristotle claims, the phainomena at first sight seem to lead us to different conclusions. The notions of matter and form are somehow intricately bound up (παρεμφαίνεσθαι) with our experience of place. In addition, our experience of moving objects – especially things moving through air – seems to suggest that place exists as a three-dimensional extension independent of the extension of the emplaced bodies. So prima facie one might be inclined, on the basis of the phainomena, to identify place with matter, form, or an independent three-dimensional extension. As a matter of fact, the latter conception was apparently at first sight so appealing that we even find Aristotle using it himself elsewhere, in less technical (or not strictly physical) contexts within the Corpus Aristotelicum 20 In the Categories, for example, place is presented as a continuous three-dimensional extension, ‘doubling,’ so to speak, the continuous extension of the emplaced body:
Text 3. Place belongs to the quantities which are continuous. For the parts of a body which join together at a common boundary occupy a certain place. Therefore also the parts of place which are occupied by the several parts of the body join together at the same boundary at which the several parts of the body do. Therefore also place is seen to be continuous. For its parts join together at one common boundary (Cat. 5a8-14).
That Aristotle is here presenting place in this way is probably due to the fact that in the Categories (a treatise dealing with the way in which we generally name things) he tends to be speaking “in accordance with widespread usage” (secundum famositatem), to quote John Buridan quoting Averroes.21 Physics 4, 1–5 however, is the
18 On the reason why Aristotle thinks (perhaps, at first sight, surprisingly) that we might be tempted to identify place with form, see below, p. 26 ff.
19 Phys. 4, 184a16-18. See above, n16.
20 See also below, text 7.
21 The quotation is from Buridan’s Questiones super octo Physicorum libros Aristotelis, Paris 1509 (first printed edition), f. lxxiii rb. Some modern scholars have suggested that the Categories presents us with an early view, and that Aristotle had changed his mind on the subject of place by the time he was writing the Physics. This possibility cannot be excluded, but is less likely, since (i) the underlying conception of place in Cat. does not appear to be very coherent anyway, and (ii) the
text in which he delivers his fullest philosophical discussion of all issues to do with place, and in such a context he seems to see it as the philosopher’s task to disentangle the various conceptions that are around and to show which one can be coherently maintained after a careful dialectical investigation. And it is here (Phys. 4, 212a20) that he thus arrives at his ‘considered view’ of place as “the first immobile surface of the surrounding body.”
The intrinsic difficulty of the subject is not the only problem with which Aristotle confronts his reader. There is also the difficulty of his own presentation: the text of Phys. 4, 1–5 is not as smooth and well organized as we might have wished it to be. It is patchy and at times crabbed and obscure. It is a text which was meant for, or which at least reflects, Aristotle’s classroom practice, where it could be elucidated by the viva vox of the teacher. Nevertheless, it is not an unintelligible text, as I will try to show in Section 2.2 of this paper, which offers an overview of its contents, and the way they cohere.
Finally, and most importantly, the conception of place Aristotle ends up with is puzzling, and has in fact puzzled commentators, in various respects. Sometimes the puzzlement merely occurs if we look at things from a non-Aristotelian point of view and (partly) disappears once we take the larger context of Aristotle’s physics and ontology into account. In other cases we are dealing with problems which should also bother an Aristotelian, but which Aristotle appears not to have solved or even recognized in the Physics or anywhere else in what remains of the Corpus Aristotelicum. In the present paper I will address what I think are the five most prominent puzzling features, which all left their traces in later ancient, medieval and even modern discussions of Aristotle’s theory: the strange arguments for rejecting the rival theory of place as a three-dimensional extension (Section 2.3), the way in which Aristotelian places are supposed to figure in the explanation of locomotion (Section 2.4), the role of natural place in the explanation of the natural motion of the elements (Section 2.5), the problem of securing the required immobility of place (Section 2.6), and the problem of the emplacement of the heavens (Section 2.7).
By going through these difficulties, and through some possible solutions, we will get a better grasp of Aristotle’s theory, and will be in a better position to understand the way in which it was received in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. For, as Simplicius already noted at the beginning of his own systematic Corollary on Place (a rich and very informative excursus appended to his discussion of Phys. 4, 1–5), Aristotle’s account contains “many difficulties and offered many lines of examination to those who came after him.”22
conception of place as three-dimensional extension also recurs in non-technical contexts in a later work such as the Meteorology; see below, text 7. On this, on the relation between the two treatises and their respective conceptions of place in general, and on some later interpretations of the differences, see Algra 1995, 121–153.
22 Simplicius In Phys. 601, 1–3. Here, and in the rest of this contribution, references to the texts of Themistius, Philoponus and Simplicius use the page and line numbers of the standard editions in the series Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca (CAG).
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2.2 The argument of Physics 4, 1–5
Physics 4, 1–5 covers various items that are all connected to the subject of place: various possible conceptions of place, an intricate analysis of what it means to be ‘in’ something, a discussion of Zeno’s paradox of place, a discussion of proper and derived (or ‘incidental’) senses of moving and a separate discussion of the way in which the heavens with their eternal circular motion exhibit locomotion and can be said to be in a place. However it does not explicitly connect these little mini-treatises in a linear account that is easy to follow. Still, behind this patchy ‘surface structure’ there is an argumentative or dialectical ‘deep structure’ which Aristotle himself lays out in the following passage (of course the numbering of the various items in this ‘dialectical programme’ is mine):
Text 4. We must try to make our inquiry in such a way that (i) the ‘what-it-is’ is provided, (ii) the aporiai are solved, (iii) the apparent facts about place are accounted for, and, finally, (iv) so that the reason for the difficulty and for the problems around it are clear. Any discussion which achieves all this, on any topic, has succeeded admirably (Phys. 4, 211a3-11).
The passage is from chapter 4, and it is indeed there and in chapter 5 that Aristotle actually can be seen to assemble his own theory, albeit with the help of the findings of the slightly more aporetic chapters 1, 2 and 3. We can also see that he practices what he preaches:
Ad (i): A definition is provided, in chapter 4, first at 212a6 (“the limit of the surrounding body,” τὸ
), and then again, with the requirement of immobility added, at 212a20 (“the first immobile limit of what surrounds,” τὸ
Ad (ii): In the second half of chapter 5 a number of aporiai that had been set out in the first three chapters – such as Zeno’s paradox of place – are shown to be soluble for Aristotle’s own conception of place or not to apply to it (while it seems to be assumed, though not explicitly stated, that they cannot be solved for, and thus in fact demolish, the rival conceptions).
Ad (iii): The apparent facts are accounted for – that is, evidently not all apparent facts, for as we saw in the previous section, the apparent facts (phainomena) seem to support various different conceptions. In fact, it is presumably because the first list of phainomena offered in chapter 1 contains various ways of speaking and thinking about place that are on closer scrutiny untenable (e.g. the assumption that there is such a thing as the void), that we are given a fresh list in the opening section of chapter 4: the properties which appear truly to belong to place in its own right (ὅ
Ad (iv): Finally, Aristotle manages to indicate the reason for the difficulties, also in chapter 4, at 212a7-30, the passage quoted above as text 2.
In sum, the conception of place which can account for the list of true phainomena, and for which the relevant aporiai can be solved or shown to be harmless, will be the winner, which can and will be accurately defined, whereas it will be shown at the same time why the rejected candidates could have been thought of as candidates in 2 Aristotle’s
the first place. With this general, unifying programme in mind we may now walk through the text as a whole.
Chapter 1 starts out by setting out a number of apparent facts (phainomena) concerning the existence of place, framed as a number of possible reasons for assuming that place exists. But, as we saw, Aristotle does not think we are required to accept all of these phainomena as true or even plausible. And indeed, a brief glance at the list shows that it contains various ways of thinking and speaking about place that will turn out to be wrong: the idea that place has three dimensions, the idea that there is such a thing as void, the idea that place seems to be (ontologically) prior to all things, as Hesiod is here said to have thought. This should be taken as a warning that, if this same context contains the claim that the natural motions of the elements show us that place “has a certain dunamis” (208b10-11), we should not too readily take this at face value as something to which Aristotle is in the end firmly committed himself. I will discuss the question of the exact role of place in the explanation of natural motion below, in Section 2.5, and will there return to the question of how this phrase should be interpreted.
Aristotle goes on (Phys. 4, 209a2-209a31) to list a number of aporiai on the nature of place, which he claims may make us doubt in the end not just what place is but even whether it exists at all. Some of these aporiai merely apply to the notion of place as a three-dimensional extension. For example:
(i) how can place be three-dimensional, yet not be a body (209a4-7);
(ii) if bodies have a three-dimensional extension as their place, then surfaces, lines and points must have underlying places too, which seems absurd (209a7-12).
Neither of these two aporiai will be solved, and hence they will continue to count against the rival conception (as will be made explicit for (i) in chapter 4). Other aporiai may be taken to apply to Aristotle’s own conception of place as well, for example:
(iii) even if place is taken to have a certain dunamis, it is nevertheless not one of the four causes (209a18-22);
(iv) Zeno’s paradox: if everything that exists is in a place, place itself, if existent, will be in a place as well, and so on ad infinitum (209a23-25).
Some of the aporiai, such as (iv), are explicitly solved in the rest of Aristotle’s account in Physics 4, others are not, or not very clearly and explicitly. Aporia (iii), for example, left some uncertainty in the later Aristotelian tradition about the precise role of (natural) place in natural motion. As noted, this will be the subject of Section 2.5 of this paper.
Chapter 2 (Phys. 4, 209a31-210a13) turns to the nature of place, by working out two basic intuitions: place as a three-dimensional extension, and place as a surrounding container, and explores and criticizes two definitions of place to which these intuitions might be thought to give rise, viz. the identification of place as form (surrounder) or as matter (extension). Aristotle’s most important objection to these definitions is that both form and matter are intimately bound up with the substance
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to which they belong, whereas the place of a substance should be separate.23 Later on, in chapter 4, he will accordingly add two further candidates for consideration: an independent surrounding container (the limit of the surrounding body) and an independent three-dimensional extension, so that we then have four candidates. Here, in chapter 2, the elimination of two of these four candidates (matter and form) is already being prepared.
Chapter 3 has as its most important element a discussion of the different senses of ‘being in,’ which is brought to bear upon the solution of Zeno’s paradox of place. Interestingly, the first premise of this paradox – which in chapter 1 (209a23-25) had been rendered as “everything that exists is in a place” – is now (210b22-23) rewritten as “everything that exists is in something.” Aristotle gives no explicit reason for this reformulation, but various remarks in the context of Phys. 4, 1–5 suggest that he thinks that the premise “everything that exists, is in a place” can only be accepted as true if we take “everything that exists” to refer to (mobile) physical substances.24 And in that form the paradox loses its force against all the conceptions of place he discusses, for none of these takes place itself as a physical substance or a mobile body. However, in the form in which it has now been rephrased, the paradox can be defused only for his own conception of place as a surface (which he has at this point of the discussion not yet proven to be right), because such a place is indeed ‘in something else’ (viz. in the substance of which it is the surface), though in a nonlocal sense of ‘in’ – i.e. in the sense (outlined by Aristotle in what preceded) in which a property is in a thing. No such defense is possible, we may realize (although this is not spelled out explicitly), for the most important rival conception of place as an independent three-dimensional extension.
Aristotle appears to have regarded the text of what we nowadays demarcate as chapters 1, 2 and 3 as primarily aporetic.25 Chapter 4 returns to the main question –“but what actually is place?” – and seems to make a fresh constructive start. In a kind of prefatory section (210b32-211b5) we are presented, as we saw, with a revised list of characteristics that seem to “genuinely belong to place” (210b33-34)–i.e. presumably characteristics that do not involve the difficulties discussed in the previous chapters.26 Aristotle then states his ‘research programme’ on place (quoted
23 A second, related objection is: “how could a thing move to its own place, if its place was its matter or its form” (210a2-3); presumably the idea is that, if a thing’s form or matter were its place, it would always by definition be in its own place. A third objection (210a5-9) is that form and matter move along with the thing of which they are the form and matter, which would mean that place itself would be moving, and thus changing place.
24 See 208b28: “every perceptible body is in a place;” 209a26 “every body is in a place;” 212b28 “only a movable body is in a place, not everything.”
25 He concludes chapter 2 by claiming that “we have now reviewed the arguments which force us to conclude that place exists, and also those which make it difficult to know what it is,” and chapter 3 by saying that “that concludes our discussion of the difficulties.”
26 They are, briefly: (i) that place is the first thing surrounding that which is in place; (ii) that it is separate from the emplaced object; (iii) that it is neither larger nor smaller than the emplaced object; (iv) that it can be left behind by the object and is separable; (v) that it exhibits the directions ‘above’ and ‘below;’ (vi) [that it helps to explain] that each body should naturally move to its own
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as text 4 above), which, as we saw, gives the argumentative ‘deep structure’ underlying chapters 4 and 5. He goes on by squarely linking the notion of place to the notion of locomotion, and appends some rather disjointed notes on real versus incidental motion and on the difference between being in a place and being in a whole. In the central section of chapter 4 (211b5-212a7) he then sets out his fourfold division of possible conceptions of place and eliminates three of the four candidates (form, independent three-dimensional extension, matter; 211b9-212a2). Hence place must be the fourth and only remaining candidate: the limit of the surrounding body (τὸ πέρας τοῦ περιέχοντος σώματος, 212a6).
Aristotle next (212a7-30) discusses the cause of the difficulty of the subject (our text 2, quoted above) and goes on to elucidate the difference between a vessel and a place, by claiming that a vessel is a mobile place and place an immobile vessel, thus adding immobility as a further requirement for the correct conception of place, partly with the help of an example – a boat on a river – which has puzzled most subsequent commentators. The river example and the problem of immobility will be discussed below, in Section 2.6. The chapter ends with some rather sketchy notes (212a21-30) that may serve to show that the resulting final definition of place (i.e., with the feature of immobility added, the “first immobile limit of that which contains” (212a20)) fits a number of the characteristics that belong to place according to the common conception of it: (i) that the cosmos has an ‘above’ and a ‘below;’ (ii) that place is like a vessel and a surrounder; (iii) that place is together with the object – after all, on this view “the limits are together with what is limited.”27
Chapter 5, finally, roughly consists of two parts. The first part (212a31–212b22) deals with the question whether and to what extent the heavens and the cosmos as a whole are in a place; this as well is a section of which both the wording and the implications have puzzled commentators over the centuries. I will discuss the relevant problems below, in Section 2.7. The second part of the chapter (212b22–213a11) then finally shows that the (or rather: some) puzzles that were raised with respect to place can be solved on Aristotle’s theory, and that the phenomenon of natural motion in connection with natural places can be accounted for, although the latter section is very sketchy and leaves much to be explained (I will briefly revert to it in my discussion of the question of natural place and natural motion below, in Section 2.5).
From this overview of the contents of Physics 4, 1–5 it will already transpire that this text does provide us with a general idea of how Aristotle works and of the main arguments that support his conclusions. However, there are many loose ends as well: not all the aporiai that are brought up are explicitly discussed and solved, some arguments are rather baffling in their brevity, important aspects of the arguplace. Note, by the way that strictly speaking (i) has by this time not yet been established (the rival conception of place as a separate three-dimensional extension is only eliminated in the course of chapter 4). This illustrates what has been noted in the text above, viz. that the argument in Phys. 4, 1–5 is not ‘linear.’
27 Of course, as we saw, the common conception of place is not confined to the idea of place as a ‘vessel and surrounder.’ But Aristotle seems to be referring back to the revised list of phainomena presented at the beginning of this chapter (and by now the rival conception of place as threedimensional extension has indeed been eliminated).
ment and of the theory are left implicit. Moreover, although Aristotle seems to think that he has successfully eliminated the three possible rival theories by showing how they lead to inconsistencies and irresolvable puzzles, questions can be raised about the coherence and usefulness of his own theory as well. His own pupil Theophrastus already produced a list of five puzzles generated by the conception of place defended in Physics 4, 1–5, and later commentators repeat these puzzles and add others of their own making.28 The interpretative and conceptual problems raised by Aristotle’s text will be the subject of the remaining sections of this paper.
2.3 Place as Three-Dimensional Extension: A Puzzling Rejection
By the time Sextus Empiricus was writing his sceptical account of physical theories of place, at the end of the second century AD, there were only two main options around: Aristotle’s conception of place as a surrounding surface, or the conception of place as an independent three-dimensional extension, versions of which had in the meantime been endorsed by Epicurus and the Stoics. Also for Aristotle himself the conception of place as three-dimensional extension constituted the most formidable rival view.29 Where form and matter could be rather easily disqualified as suitable candidates for the identification of place, the conception of place as a threedimensional extension was one which had a more solid foundation in ordinary thinking and speaking, and which possibly for that very reason even figured in Aristotle’s own Categories, as we saw. In Physics 4 he intends to prove that, from the strict point of view of philosophical physics, ordinary thinking and speaking are wrong in this respect. Given that there is this much at stake, the arguments adduced are surprisingly obscure and puzzling. This was in fact what triggered Philoponus’ insertion of a separate excursus (now known as his Corollary on Place) right in the middle of his commentary on chapter 4. It starts out with a refutation of Aristotle’s arguments (In Phys. 557, 12–563, 25) before turning to its main task: offering a vindication of the rival conception of place as extension.
Let us first have a closer look at the two arguments Aristotle applies in chapter 4 They can be paraphrased as follows:
(i) On this conception of place, there would be an infinity of places in the same spot (
, 211b20-21), for in a continuous emplaced body we can distinguish an infinity of parts which will all have their own places, so that we have an infinity of juxtaposed (and, we may presume, in fact also overlapping) three-dimensional places ‘in the same spot;’ and
28 Theophrastus ap. Simplicium In Phys. 604, 5-11 (= Theophrastus fr. 146 FHSG). On Theophrastus’ position and the interpretation of these aporiai, see Algra 2014, 29-38.
29 Averroes (Ibn Rushd) in his Short Commentary suggests that the main rival views of place as either a surrounding surface or an extension should be presented as alternatives in a hypotheticodisjunctive argument. See Lettink 1994, 313.
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His body was doubled so that he could not use his hands to tear the bag or strike out.
In two minutes he had relinquished all hope.
He began to wish that he had never heard of the Mahdi, or the Mameluke.
But regrets were useless.
He knew he had to die.
Had it been on the battlefield, pitted against a foe, he would have been proud to die—because he knew no disgrace would be attached to it.
But to die in a sack, like a mangy dog or vicious cat, was so hurtful to his self-respect and so humiliating that he cried with vexation.
The water got to his lungs. His stomach was full of it. His brain grew dizzy.
The singing in his ears had become like the roaring of the waters of a great cataract.
Mercifully unconsciousness came, and had not the conspirators been discussing their schemes of rioting and rebellion at night by the banks of the Nile, Madcap Max would never have been the hero of this story.
Shula rubbed Max briskly.
He straightened out the madcap’s body and laid it face downward.
The conspirators began kneading the poor fellow’s back—sitting on it, treading it, kneeling on it, and using every means of which they knew to restore life.
“Get out of that and meet a fellow face to face.”
The words startled the conspirators.
They were uttered by Max, who, black and blue with the treatment he had been subjected to, had revived with great suddenness.
He did not realize where he was, but he knew he was being hurt, hence his calling out.
He jumped to his feet.
“Shula!” he exclaimed.
“Max!”
“Yes. How did you find me? Was I drowned? Where am I?”
“You are not drowned; you are by the Nile’s water, and the less you say the longer you will be likely to live. Come—let us get home. Can you walk?”
“Of course I can.”
Max started forward, but before his legs had moved a dozen times he fell on his face.
The conspirators lifted him up, and as no conveyances were to be found in Kordofan at that hour of the night, they had to carry him to Shula’s residence.
Before morning’s dawn he had told his adventures and laughed at the escapade.
“If ever the Mahdi rules in Kordofan I am going to see Lalla,” he said. “I want to know more about her.”
“Not even the prophet could give you the right to enter any man’s harem,” said Shula.
“Then your Mahdi must be a queer sort of fellow.”
Max was unable to talk longer, for he was naturally weak from his struggles in the Nile.
Twenty-four hours elapsed before he was able to feel that he was the strong athlete again.
When he awoke on the morning of the third day he heard cries which roused him:
“Allah il Allah!”
“Long live the Mahdi!”
“Down with the foreigner!”
“The Mahdi has come!”
Max looked at Shula, but the merchant did not speak.
His face was white as that of a corpse. He knew that he had staked all his property and his life on the riot which was then in progress.
“Is it true? Has the Mahdi come?”
“No, Max, but the people are expecting him.”
A heavy fusillade was heard on the streets, the windows were shaken, and some panes of glass broken.
“What does it mean?”
“They are fighting,” answered Shula.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE MAHDI’S JUSTICE.
“Fighting, and you here? Why are not you at the head of the Mahdi’s friends?”
“I—stayed—with you.”
“Come! where is my sword?”
“It is here; but don’t go out. You will be killed—the soldiers wouldn’t join the Mahdi, and they are shooting the people down.”
“Give me my Winchester and my sword.”
“It is madness.”
“Well, I am the madcap,” laughed Max; “but if I wasn’t I’d scorn to be a coward.”
“A coward?”
“Yes, I said so, and I repeat—a coward.”
“Why do you call me that? I have fought in the army of Egypt.”
“Perhaps so. But did you not stir up this riot and are now afraid——”
“I am not afraid; but is it policy to risk so much?”
“Risk all—if by that means you save your honor.”
“But the people have no chance against the soldiers.”
“All the more reason why you should not desert them.”
“See what it means to me—loss of property, perhaps life.”
“Do as you like, most excellent Shula, but I am going to fight.”
“It is madness!”
“Give me my rifle and my sword.”
Max seized the weapons and rushed into the street.
He saw the rioting, and felt that Shula was right—the people had but scant chance.
That made Max all the more determined.
He waved his sword above his head and rushed into the thickest of the fight.
“Long live the Mahdi!”
At the sight of the paleface the soldiers fell back.
“I am an American,” shouted Max, “but I am with you. The Mahdi is a native of your country, he is no foreigner. Strike for him, and let your cry be Egypt for the Egyptian, the Soudan for the Soudanese!”
The people lost their fear.
Like demons they sprang on the soldiers, but the soldiers did not return the fire.
Instead, they reversed their guns and retired.
The Egyptian officer was enraged.
“I’ll shoot the first man who deserts!” he shouted.
A number of the soldiers again shouldered arms, but the majority kept them reversed.
Max saw the advantage he had gained.
He caught the bridle of a horse whose rider had fallen in the mêlée.
Vaulting into the saddle, he looked proud and defiant as he sat there, like a veritable centaur.
“Soldiers, you believe in Mahomet! Hark ye! I have fought with the great Mahdi. I have seen the thousands of Fashoda beaten back when he waved his wand. He has no need of sword or scimiter; he fights with his eyes, and when he waves his hand, armies fall back.”
The enthusiasm was great.
Max had won over most of the soldiers, and the others were undecided.
The officer was furious.
“Ready!” he shouted, but very few of his men obeyed the call.
“Load! Aim! Fire!”
Half a dozen rifle shots were fired, but Max saw to his great joy that the aim was too high to do any damage.
“Men! soldiers of the crescent!” he called out, “our fight is not against you. The Mahdi is of your faith. Nay, more, he will restore the great Mameluke kingdom. Every soldier of his will be greater than a pasha, for the Mahdi is the last of the Mamelukes.”
The speech was listened to by soldiers and people, who wondered who this young paleface could be.
The result was electrical.
Every rifle was reversed.
The officer was left alone to return to the fort—a commander without soldiers.
At the time when Max so eloquently proclaimed the Mahdi, Mohammed Achmet was close to the gates of the city. He heard the cheering and the firing.
His face paled visibly, for he disliked bloodshed.
Half an hour later, riding between the Persian Sherif el Habib and the Arab Mohammed, the Mahdi rode into the main street of Kordofan.
“The Mahdi!”
“The Mahdi has come!”
The cheers rose on the air.
Songs were sung—the soldiers fraternized with the people. Everywhere the enthusiasm was intense.
Even the garrison joined in the cheering, and the officer handed his sword to the Mahdi.
“I cannot fight without men,” he said, “so take my sword and use it for truth and our faith.”
The Mahdi took the weapon, and immediately handed it back, saying:
“General, you are a brave man. Take the sword, for you will use it as only a brave man can.”
The fires of joy were lighted.
Houses were thrown open, and everywhere the Mahdi was welcomed.
Mahmoud Achmet, when he saw that the Mahdi was triumphant, came to offer the hospitality of his house to the conqueror.
Max recognized him, and after the man had said all he intended, came forward.
“You threw a young man into the Nile. You enveloped him in a sack, and drowned him.”
“It is he! I know it! The Mahdi is the Mahdi. He has raised this man from the dead. All my wealth is his,” exclaimed Mahmoud.
Max saw the mistake the man had made. He, however, did not contradict him, but allowed him to think that the power of the Mahdi had indeed raised him from the dead.
He spoke privately to the Mahdi.
“Let him give me Lalla,” said Max.
“You spoke of your wealth,” said the Mahdi; “give this man the girl called Lalla.”
Mahmoud fell to the ground.
He tore his hair and pulled out his beard.
“Woe is me, I cannot!”
“She is dead?” queried the Mahdi.
“Indeed it is true. Inshallah!”
Mahmoud then admitted that he was jealous of Max, and after throwing him into the river, Lalla had refused to be comforted, had called him a murderer, and refused to allow him to approach her. Then it was that in his anger he ordered her to be drowned.
Max told of the brutal way in which Mahmoud acted.
The Mahdi called the pashas and beys together, and in the presence of a great concourse of citizens, said:
“One of your number, Mahmoud Achmet, has at times made away with such of his wives that displeased him. Now, therefore, to prove to you how abhorrent such a thing is, it is my order that Mahmoud Achmet be taken from here in the sack which he has provided for others, and that he be thrown into the Nile.”
“Mercy!” cried the wealthy man—“mercy! I will give you wealth.”
“I do not want it.”
“All I have shall be yours!”
“It is mine already.”
One of the eunuchs connected with Mahmoud’s harem testified how the wives were constantly beaten with whips.
“The same measure shall be meted out to Mahmoud,” said the Mahdi; “it is fate.”
The man pleaded for his life, but the Mahdi was inexorable.
Mahmoud suffered the scourging from the hands of his own eunuch, and was drowned in the Nile.
“It is fate! It is justice!” exclaimed the people, who were more than ever enthused with the prophet and his cause.
CHAPTER XXXI.
VICTORY ALL ALONG THE LINE.
Early on the following morning a man, riding at hot haste, asked for the Mahdi.
He bore a letter to the prophet, and another to Sherif el Habib.
When the dispatch was opened the Mahdi read:
“To the illustrious Mahomet Ahmed, the Prophet, Imaum and Mahdi:
“G : Senaar resisted for several hours, but the flag of the Mahdi floats over its fortress. The day is ours.
“I .”
Sherif el Habib handed his document to the Mahdi.
“Dear uncle, we have fought and won,” ran the letter. “I was wounded in the right foot and lost two toes, but that was better than my life. The people were all with us, but the soldiers fought bravely. It was a tough battle. The commander gave me his sword, which I will send to the Mahdi when I hear from him. How is Girzilla? Give her my love. Is Max the Madcap alive? Of course he is. Tell him not to play any pranks in Kordofan.
“Your loving nephew, “I .”
When the Mahdi had read the letters aloud to his staff, he called Max to him.
“It was your plan which we adopted,” he said, “and we are victorious. You are Max Pasha; and your nephew”—turning to Sherif—“is also pasha, and is made governor of Senaar, while Max, here, shall be governor of Kordofan.”
The people cheered the young governor.
Turning to the Mahdi, Max said:
“I thank you for the honor, but I am about to decline it.”
“You must not.”
“I am about to decline it after to-morrow. I want to be governor and pasha for one day, because I am going back to America, and if I ever go on the lecture platform the people will sooner pay a dollar to hear a real live pasha, than a quarter if the speaker is only Madcap Max.”
The Mahdi laughed.
“Still thinking of the dollars?” he said.
“Yes,” answered Max; “and whenever you get tired of being the Mahdi come over to New York and I will trot you round, and—oh, my! won’t the dollars just flow into our pockets.”
But before the Mahdi could reply another dispatch was placed in his hands.
It was from a trusty agent in the North.
“Giegler Pasha has placed the army of Khartoum under the command of Yussuf Pasha Hassan,” it read, “and is marching with five thousand men against you. Hicks Pasha, an Englishman, with three thousand men, is marching from the northeast. You are to be cut in two by these armies.”
“No! by the prophet—no!” exclaimed the Mahdi. “We will attack both and exterminate them.”
The bugles called the army together and the march was ordered.
With a speed accelerated by the most fanatical enthusiasm, the followers of the Mahdi started to meet Yussuf Pasha Hassan.
The soldiers of Khartoum were well disciplined veterans, but they lacked enthusiasm.
The Mahdi—still without weapon—rode at the head of his people and gave the words of command.
Like a cyclone tearing everything before it on a Western prairie, the army of the Mahdi swept on the veterans commanded by Yussuf.
The Egyptians made a stubborn resistance at first, but the Mahdists were more like fiends.
They seized the soldiers by their hair and deliberately cut their throats.
It was a horrible carnage.
The Mahdi never struck a blow, never made any effort to defend himself, but was ever in the thickest of the fight.
His brow shone as though it were gold.
His presence was remarkable.
Max fought with desperate valor.
At times he stood up in the stirrups to give himself more power in striking a blow.
“The Mahdi forever!” he shouted, with every savage blow.
Yussuf saw the young fellow and knew that, next to the Mahdi, Max was the most powerful leader.
Yussuf would not touch the Mahdi.
He was a trifle superstitious.
If Mohammed was the Mahdi, steel weapons could not kill him, and Yussuf would not risk an encounter; so he rode through the fighting demons until he reached the side of Max.
“The Mahdi forever!” shouted Max, as he suddenly wheeled round and aimed a blow at Yussuf’s head.
The veteran officer parried the blow and made a lunge at Max.
But the American’s sword swung round with cyclonic speed, and Yussuf’s sword merely struck the air.
As the heavy scimiters clashed together sparks of fire flew out, and seemed to keep fiery time to the music of the steel.
Yussuf got angry
“Do you also bear a charmed life?” he sneeringly asked, during a pause in the duel.
“I am an American,” answered Max, “and fight for liberty.”
Again the fight was resumed.
Great heaps of dead were to be found in every direction.
The horses ridden by Yussuf and Max often had to kick and trample down the dead and dying.
It was a fearful sight.
Yussuf fought bravely.
His left arm had been broken by Max, just below the shoulder, but he would not give in.
“Surrender!”
“Never!”
“Then die!”
“I will, but you will go first.”
Max was of a different opinion, and he kept swinging round his heavy scimiter with the strength of a giant.
Once, when Yussuf parried a blow, the weapon struck the horse’s neck, almost severing the head from the body.
Yussuf was now at a disadvantage.
Max leaped from the saddle and stood by the Egyptian’s side.
“We are equal,” he said.
But it was scarcely the truth, for Yussuf had only one arm to fight with.
The Egyptian slipped in a pool of blood, and as he did so a sword still grasped by a dead man pierced his side.
The brave man could stand no more.
“I surrender!” he gasped, but it was not a surrender to Max, but to the Great Creator, for as the man uttered the words the breath left his body.
Out of four thousand seven hundred men—hale, hearty veterans— who had marched under the crescent of Egypt that morning, only two hundred and one survived at night.
The Mahdists did not lose more than four hundred men all told.
They did not stop to care for the wounded or bury the dead.
Another blow had to be struck, and this time at Hicks Pasha.
It was a two days march to Tokar.
At that place Hicks, with three thousand seven hundred and forty-six men, met the advance guard of the Mahdists, led by Sherif el Habib and Max.
The fighting was desperate, but seemed to be as favorable to the Egyptians as the Mahdists, until the Mahdi himself arrived.
There was a charm and magnetism about the man which made him irresistible.
His presence was equal to a thousand men.
In less than an hour the unfortunate Hicks was dead, and two thousand three hundred and seventy-three of his men lay stiffening under the tropical sun.
The defeat was a thorough one.
The Mahdi was now master of all the Soudan except Khartoum and Equatoria, over which Emin Bey presided.
The people flocked to the Mahdi’s tent.
Dervishes proclaimed him to be the promised Imaum. In the mosques his name was mentioned with that of the prophet, and the people prostrated themselves when reference was made to him.
CHAPTER XXXII.
“ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.”
A week of peace after the storm of war was delightful.
The army of the Mahdists was large enough to crush any force which could be sent against it.
The officers took things easy.
Mohammed had brought his harem to the Mahdi’s headquarters, and Ibrahim had received a furlough or leave of absence for two months.
This gave him plenty of time to be with Girzilla.
One day Girzilla sought out Max and whispered:
“I have found him.”
“Whom do you refer to?”
“The last of the Mamelukes.”
“And he is——”
“The Mahdi.”
“Are you sure, Girzilla?”
“Yes; by secret signs I discovered him, and he will restore the glories of his race and bring the whole world to believe in Mahomet.”
Max went to the Mahdi and told him of his mission.
The tears came into the warrior prophet’s eyes as he heard Max tell his story; how he had lost his father in the caves of the bandits, and had been rescued by Girzilla.
When Max narrated how he had become enthused over the story of the great Mameluke who escaped from Mohammed Ali, the Mahdi embraced him.
“For my ancestors’ sake, you are doubly dear to me. Stay with me, my son, and share in my triumph.”
“No—the work is done. I shall go back to my own land, and shall do as other Americans have done before me—write a book, or tell on the platform the story of the Mahdi, and the Mameluke.”
Max wanted to start at once, but Ibrahim pleaded with him to stay until after his wedding with Girzilla.
This Max consented to do, and three weeks later a most impressive wedding took place in the vestibule of a mosque at Kordofan.
The couple were united and blessed by the Mahdi.
The Imaum made some pertinent remarks, which were worthy of the great prophet himself.
To Ibrahim, after praising his courage, he said:
“You have taken to yourself a wife. The Koran permits you to take three others; but take my advice—cleave to the one. It is better, and a new dispensation will so order. Treat Girzilla, not as others of our race have been treated, but let her be your equal; for it is now written that if you be faithful to her on earth the gates of Paradise will open for you both, and she shall be your bride through all eternity.”
After spending the customary seven days in prayer and religious observances, Ibrahim obtained permission to take his dusky bride on a trip up the Nile in company with Max.
The cataracts were passed, and Cairo reached.
Girzilla pleaded so earnestly to continue the journey that her loving husband accompanied her to Suez, where they bade farewell to Madcap Max as the Peninsular and Oriental steamer steamed out of the port.
Max had not noticed that it was the very vessel he had made the journey on three years before.
He made himself known to the captain, and the tedium of the journey was broken by the story of adventure told by the madcap.
When Max reached New York he found himself the head of the firm, and the cares of business life caused him to relinquish the thought of “coining dollars” on the lecture platform; but he made a solemn promise to the author that some day he would tell him the story of his life.
Two years passed, and the author asked the well-known and highly respected merchant to tell the story.
“To-morrow come to us, be our guest for a week, and you shall know all.”
“But——”
“My wife will welcome you as an old friend.”
Max had married a fairer woman than Girzilla, but many a time he declared that no more true one ever lived than the Arab maiden.
When the author reached the Gordon uptown mansion on the following day he was surprised to find so many evidences of the Orient everywhere; but when, an hour later, Max took the author by the hand and led him into a large parlor, he was still more surprised, for there stood, waiting to receive him, Ibrahim and Girzilla.
Sherif el Habib was dead. His nephew had sold the shawl manufactory, and found himself extremely wealthy.
He at once determined to make the “grand tour” of the world, and so infatuated was he with the remembrance of Max, that nothing would satisfy him but to commence the journey proper from New York.
That was how this story came to be written.
Max narrated it, but Ibrahim and Girzilla insisted on a more lavish praise of the madcap than he would acknowledge he deserved.
Never was there a happier couple than the Persian and his lovely bride, who does not look so dark and dusky in the modern American clothing as she did on the deserts of Africa.
Ibrahim accepted the advice of the Mahdi, and declares that Girzilla occupies every bit of his heart, and he could not take three more wives, even if his religion ordered it.
Our story is told. All has ended happily for our madcap and his friend, and although his heart turns sick sometimes as he thinks of the carnage he witnessed, yet he says he shall always look back with pride to the intimacy he had with Mohammed Ahmed, the Mahdi and the Mameluke, the result of his trip “In the Volcano’s Mouth.”
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NO. 134
Charles Garvice’s New Stories
If you are a novel reader, you certainly must be waiting for the appearance of a new novel from the pen of Charles Garvice. We are glad to inform you that you will find it in
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Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
The following change was made:
p. 211: Korfodan changed to Kordofan (street of Kordofan.)
