Kitap 3
6
Further, it is apparent that all these lines are divisions of Body, either in breadth or in depth or in length. Moreover every kind of shape is equally present in a solid, so that if Hermes is not in the stone,Apparently a proverbial expression. neither is the half-cube in the cube as a determinate shape.
7
Hence neither is the plane; for if any kind of plane were in it, so would that plane be which defines the half-cube. The same argument applies to the line and to the point or unit. Hence however true it may be that body is substance, if planes, lines and points are more truly substance than Body is, and these are not substance in any sense, the question of what Being is and what is the substance of things baffles us.
8
Because, in addition to the above arguments, absurd results follow from a consideration of generation and destruction; for it seems that if substance, not having existed before, now exists, or having existed before, subsequently does not exist it suffers these changes in the process of generation and destruction. But points, lines and planes, although they exist at one time and at another do not, cannot be in process of being either generated or destroyed;
9
for whenever bodies are joined or divided, at one time, when they are joined one surface is instantaneously produced, and at another, when they are divided, two. Thus when the bodies are combined the surface does not exist but has perished; and when they are divided, surfaces exist which did not exist before. (The indivisible point is of course never divided into two.) And if they are generated and destroyed, from what are they generated?
