Книга только для ознакомления
.e. fire and earth; and of
these he ranges the hot with the existent, and the other with the
non-existent.
From what has been said, then, and from the wise men who have
now sat in council with us, we have got thus much-on the one hand from
the earliest philosophers, who regard the first principle as corporeal
(for water and fire and such things are bodies), and of whom some
suppose that there is one corporeal principle, others that there are
more than one, but both put these under the head of matter; and on the
other hand from some who posit both this cause and besides this the
source of movement, which we have got from some as single and from
others as twofold.
Down to the Italian school, then, and apart from it,
philosophers have treated these subjects rather obscurely, except
that, as we said, they have in fact used two kinds of cause, and one
of these-the source of movement-some treat as one and others as two.
But the Pythagoreans have said in the same way that there are two
principles, but added this much, which is peculiar to them, that
they thought that finitude and infinity were not attributes of certain
other things, e.g. of fire or earth or anything else of this kind, but
that infinity itself and unity itself were the substance of the things
of which they are predicated. This is why number was the substance
of all things. On this subject, then, they expressed themselves
thus; and regarding the question of essence they began to make
statements and definitions, but treated the matter too simply
|
