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(8) There is a difficulty connected with these, the hardest of all
and the most necessary to examine, and of this the discussion now
awaits us. |
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But if this is necessary, and there must be something apart from
the individuals, it will be necessary that the genera exist apart
from the individuals, either the lowest or the highest genera; |
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Further, if we admit in the fullest sense that something exists apart
from the concrete thing, whenever something is predicated of the matter,
must there, if there is something apart, be something apart from each
set of individuals, or from some and not from others, or from none? |
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But again (B) if we are to suppose this, it is hard to say in which
cases we are to suppose it and in which not. |
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(9) Again, one might ask the following question also about the first
principles. |
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But if there is a common element which is numerically one, and each
of the principles is one, and the principles are not as in the case
of perceptible things different for different things (e.g. since this
particular syllable is the same in kind whenever it occurs, the elements
it are also the same in kind; |
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(10) One difficulty which is as great as any has been neglected both
by modern philosophers and by their predecessors - whether the principles
of perishable and those of imperishable things are the same or different. |
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"From which all that was and is and will be hereafter -
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Trees, and men and women, took their growth,
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And beasts and birds and water-nourished fish,
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And long-aged gods." |
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The implication is evident even apart from these words; |
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"we see earth, by water water,
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By ether godlike ether, by fire wasting fire,
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Love by love, and strife by gloomy strife." |
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But - and this is the point we started from - this at least is evident,
that on his theory it follows that strife is as much the cause of
existence as of destruction. |
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"But when strife at last waxed great in the limbs of the Sphere,
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And sprang to assert its rights as the time was fulfilled
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Which is fixed for them in turn by a mighty oath." |
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This implies that change was necessary; |
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Let this suffice as proof of the fact that the principles cannot
be the same. |
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(11) The inquiry that is both the hardest of all and the most necessary
for knowledge of the truth is whether being and unity are the substances
of things, and whether each of them, without being anything else,
is being or unity respectively, or we must inquire what being and
unity are, with the implication that they have some other underlying
nature. |
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(A) If we do not suppose unity and being to be substances, it follows
that none of the other universals is a substance; |
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But (B) if there is a unity-itself and a being itself, unity and
being must be their substance; |
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There are objections to both views. |
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Further, if unity-itself is indivisible, according to Zeno's postulate
it will be nothing. |
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But even if ore supposes the case to be such that, as some say, number
proceeds from unity-itself and something else which is not one, none
the less we must inquire why and how the product will be sometimes
a number and sometimes a magnitude, if the not-one was inequality
and was the same principle in either case. |
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created 1996/11/25 modified 2009/04/26