Book 1
2
and both of these attributes, it is said, belong to the FormἸδέα is here used in its Platonic sense, as a synonym for εἶδος, class-form, to denote the permanent immaterial reality that underlies any group of things classed together in virtue of possessing a common quality. An ἰδέα is perceptible only by the mind, but the word does not denote the content of a mental perception, as does the derivative idea in ordinary English. of good (I mean both being the first of goods and being by its presence the cause to the other goods of their being good), since it is of that Form that goodness is most truly predicated (inasmuch as the other goods are good by participation in and resemblance to the Form of good) and also it is the first of goods, for the destruction of that which is participated in involves the destruction of the things participating in the Form (which get their designation by participating in it),
3
and that is the relation existing between what is primary and what is subsequent; so that the Form of good is the Absolute Good, inasmuch as the Form of good is separable from the things that participate in it, as are the other Forms also.
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Now a thorough examination of this opinion belongs to another course of study, and one that for the most part necessarily lies more in the field of Logic, for that is the only science dealing with arguments that are at the same time destructive and general.
5
But if we are to speak about it concisely,we say that in the first place to assert the existence of a Form not only of good but of anything else is an expression of logic and a mere abstraction (but this has been considered in various ways both in extraneous discoursesThe use of this phrase by Aristotle elsewhere seems to show that it denotes doctrines, recorded in books or familiar in debate, that were not peculiar to the Peripatetic school. and in those on philosophical lines);
