Book 3
22
but this is impossible, whether the series stops or proceeds to infinity. And further, how can perishable things exist if their principles are abolished? On the other hand if the principles are imperishable, why should some imperishable principles produce perishable things, and others imperishable things? This is not reasonable; either it is impossible or it requires much explanation.
23
Further, no one has so much as attempted to maintain different principles; they maintain the same principles for everything. But they swallow down the difficulty which we raised firsti.e., whether all things have the same principles. as though they took it to be trifling.For Aristotle’s views about the principles of perishable and imperishable things see Aristot. Met. 7.7-10, Aristot. Met. 12.1-7.
24
But the hardest question of all to investigate and also the most important with a view to the discovery of the truth, is whether after all Being and Unity are substances of existing things, and each of them is nothing else than Being and Unity respectively, or whether we should inquire what exactly Being and Unity are, there being some other nature underlying them.
25
Some take the former, others the latter view of the nature of Being and Unity. Plato and the Pythagoreans hold that neither Being nor Unity is anything else than itself, and that this is their nature, their essence being simply Being and Unity.
26
But the physicists, e.g. Empedocles, explain what Unity is by reducing it to something, as it were, more intelligible—or it would seem that by Love Empedocles means Unity; at any rate Love is the cause of Unity in all things. Others identify fire and others air with this Unity and Being of which things consist and from which they have been generated.
