Book 5
3
(d) The same term is applied to that which prevents anything from moving or acting in accordance with its own impulse; as pillars hold 〈up〉 the weights which are imposed upon them, and as the poets make AtlasCf. Hes. Th. 517. hold up the heaven, because otherwise it would fall upon the earth (as some of the physicistse.g., Empedocles held that the heavens were kept in place by the velocity of their rotation;Aristot. De Caelo 284a 24, 295a 16 (Ritter and Preller, 170 b). maintain also).
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It is in this sense that we say that that which holds together holds what it holds together; because otherwise the latter would disperse, each part in accordance with its own impulse.
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To be in a thing is used similarly in senses corresponding to those of to have.
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To come from something means: (a) In one sense, to come from something as matter, and this in two ways: in respect either of the primary genus or of the ultimate species. E.g., in the one sense everything liquefiable comes from water, and in the other the statue comes from bronze.
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(b) To come from something as the first moving principle; e.g., from what comes fighting? From abuse; because this is the beginning of a fight. (c) To come from the combination of matter and form (as the parts come from the whole, and the verse from the Iliad , and the stones from the house); for the shape is an end, and that is a complete thing which has attained its end.
