Kitap 3
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Above all we must consider and apply ourselves to the question (7.) whether there is any other cause per se besides matter, and if so whether it is dissociable from matter, and whether it is numerically one or several; and whether there is anything apart from the concrete thing (by the concrete thing I mean matter together with whatever is predicated of it) or nothing; or whether there is in some cases but not in others; and what these cases are.Discussed iv. 1-8. For answers to these questions see Aristot. Met. 7.8, 13-14; Aristot. Met. 12.6-10; Aristot. Met. 13.10.
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Further, (8.) we must ask whether the first principles are limited in number or in kindDiscussed Aristot. Met. 3.4.8-10; answered Aristot. Met. 12.4-5, Aristot. Met. 13.10.—both those in the definitions and those in the substrate—and (ix.) whether the principles of perishable and of imperishable things are the same or different; and whether all are imperishable, or those of perishable things are perishable.Discussed Aristot. Met. 3.4.11-23; for Aristotle’s general views on the subject see Aristot. Met. 7.7-10, Aristot. Met. 12.1-7.
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Further, there is the hardest and most perplexing question of all: (x.) whether Unity and Being (as the Pythagoreans and Plato maintained) are not distinct, but are the substance of things; or whether this is not so, and the substrate is something distinctDiscussed Aristot. Met. 3.4.24-34; answered Aristot. Met. 7.16.3-4, Aristot. Met. 10.2.(as Empedocles holds of Love,Actually Love was no more the universal substrate than was any other of Empedocles’ elements; Aristotle appears to select it on account of its unifying function. another thinkerHeraclitus. of fire, and another Thales. of water or airAnaximenes.);
