Kitap 14
3
Therefore things which contain matter cannot be eternal, that is, if that which is capable of not existing is not eternal, as we have had occasion to say elsewhere.Aristot. Met. 9.8.15-17, Aristot. De Caelo 1.12. Now if what we have just been saying—that no substance is eternal unless it is actuality—is true universally, and the elements are the matter of substance, an eternal substance can have no elements of which, as inherent in it, it consists.
4
There are some who, while making the element which acts conjointly with unity the indeterminate dyad, object to the unequal, quite reasonably, on the score of the difficulties which it involves. But they are rid only of those difficultiesCf. Aristot. Met. 14.1.14-17. which necessarily attend the theory of those who make the unequal, i.e. the relative, an element; all the difficulties which are independent of this view must apply to their theories also, whether it is Ideal or mathematical number that they construct out of these elements.
5
There are many causes for their resorting to these explanations, the chief being that they visualized the problem in an archaic form. They supposed that all existing things would be one, absolute Being, unless they encountered and refuted Parmenides’ dictum:
5
It will ne’er be proved that things which are not, are,Parmenides Fr. 7 (Diels).
5
i.e., that they must show that that which is not, is; for only so—of that which is, and of something else—could existing things be composed, if they are more than one.Cf. Plat. Soph. 237a, 241d, 256e.
