Book 3
1.10
The assumption is that the things from which you take away number are no longer equal nor determinate, nor have they quantity or quality. These are the things to which becoming always, and being never, belongs. But the object of thought is something constant from which nothing is subtracted, to which nothing is added. This is the nature of the eternal things, the attribute of which is to be ever alike and the same. And indeed Epicharmus has expressed himself plainly about objects of sense and objects of thought.
1.10
A. But gods there always were; never at any time were they wanting, while things in this world are always alike, and are brought about through the same agencies. B. Yet it is said that Chaos was the first-born of the gods. A. How so? If indeed there was nothing out of which, or into which, it could come first. B. What! Then did nothing come first after all? A. No, by Zeus, nor second either,
1.11
at least of the things which we are thus talking about now; on the contrary, they existed from all eternity. . . . A. But suppose some one chooses to add a single pebble to a heap containing either an odd or an even number, whichever you please, or to take away one of those already there; do you think the number of pebbles would remain the same? B. Not I. A. Nor yet, if one chooses to add to a cubit-measure another length,Or, reading στερρόν for ἕτερον, a substantial length. or cut off some of what was there already, would the original measure still exist? B. Of course not. A. Now consider mankind in this same way. One man grows, and another again shrinks; and they are all undergoing change the whole time. But a thing which naturally changes and never remains in the same state must ever be different from that which has thus changed. And even so you and I were one pair of men yesterday, are another to-day, and again will be another to-morrow, and will never remain ourselves, by this same argument.
