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. His divergence from the Pythagoreans in making the
One and the Numbers separate from things, and his introduction of
the Forms, were due to his inquiries in the region of definitions (for
the earlier thinkers had no tincture of dialectic), and his making the
other entity besides the One a dyad was due to the belief that the
numbers, except those which were prime, could be neatly produced out
of the dyad as out of some plastic material. Yet what happens is the
contrary; the theory is not a reasonable one. For they make many
things out of the matter, and the form generates only once, but what
we observe is that one table is made from one matter, while the man
who applies the form, though he is one, makes many tables. And the
relation of the male to the female is similar; for the latter is
impregnated by one copulation, but the male impregnates many
females; yet these are analogues of those first principles.
Plato, then, declared himself thus on the points in question; it
is evident from what has been said that he has used only two causes,
that of the essence and the material cause (for the Forms are the
causes of the essence of all other things, and the One is the cause of
the essence of the Forms); and it is evident what the underlying
matter is, of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible
things, and the One in the case of Forms, viz. that this is a dyad,
the great and the small
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