Kitap 13
19
Since, then, some thinkers hold that the Ideas and numbers are such substances, and that their elements are the elements and principles of reality, we must inquire what it is that they hold, and in what sense they hold it.
20
ThoseThe Pythagoreans and Speusippus. who posit only numbers, and mathematical numbers at that, may be considered laterAristot. Met. 14.2.21, Aristot. Met. 14.3.2-8, 15, 16.; but as for those who speak of the Ideas, we can observe at the same time their way of thinking and the difficulties which befall them. For they not only treat the Ideas as universal substances, but also as separable and particular.
21
(That this is impossible has been already shownAristot. Met. 3.6.7-9. by a consideration of the difficulties involved.) The reason why those who hold substances to be universal combined these two views was that they did not identify substances with sensible things. They considered that the particulars in the sensible world are in a state of flux, and that none of them persists, but that the universal exists besides them and is something distinct from them.
22
This theory, as we have said in an earlier passage,Aristot. Met. 13.4, and cf. Aristot. Met. 1.6. was initiated by Socrates as a result of his definitions, but he did not separate universals from particulars; and he was right in not separating them. This is evident from the facts; for without the universal we cannot acquire knowledge, and the separation of the universal is the cause of the difficulties which we find in the Ideal theory.
23
Others,The Platonists. regarding it as necessary, if there are to be any substances besides those which are sensible and transitory, that they should be separable, and having no other substances, assigned separate existence to those which are universally predicated; thus it followed that universals and particulars are practically the same kind of thing. This in itself would be one difficulty in the view which we have just described.See Introduction.
