Book 14
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OthersPlato and Xenocrates. hold that inequality is the nature of the bad. It follows, then, that all things partake of the Bad except one—absolute unity; and that numbers partake of it in a more unmitigated form than do spatial magnitudesAs being more directly derived from the first principles. Cf. Aristot. Met. 1.9.23 n.; and that the Bad is the province for the activity of the Good, and partakes of and tends towards that which is destructive of the Good; for a contrary is destructive of its contrary.
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And if, as we said,Aristot. Met. 14.1.17. the matter of each thing is that which is it potentially—e.g., the matter of actual fire is that which is potentially fire—then the Bad will be simply the potentially Good.
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Thus all these objections follow because (1.) they make every principle an element; (2.) they make contraries principles; (3.) they make unity a principle; and (4.) they make numbers the primary substances, and separable, and Forms.
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If, then, it is impossible both not to include the Good among the first principles, and to include it in this way, it is clear that the first principles are not being rightly represented, nor are the primary substances. Nor is a certain thinkerEvidently Speusippus; cf. Aristot. Met. 14.4.3. right in his assumption when he likens the principles of the universe to that of animals and plants, on the ground that the more perfect forms are always produced from those which are indeterminate and imperfect, and is led by this to assert that this is true also of the ultimate principles; so that not even unity itself is a real thing.Speusippus argued that since all things are originally imperfect, unity, which is the first principle, must be imperfect, and therefore distinct from the good. Aristotle objects that the imperfect does not really exist, and so Speusippus deprives his first principle of reality.
