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It is obvious also that the potency of merely doing a thing or
having it done to one is implied in that of doing it or having it done
well, but the latter is not always implied in the former: for he who
does a thing well must also do it, but he who does it merely need
not also do it well.
3
There are some who say, as the Megaric school does, that a thing
'can' act only when it is acting, and when it is not acting it
'cannot' act, e.g. that he who is not building cannot build, but
only he who is building, when he is building; and so in all other
cases. It is not hard to see the absurdities that attend this view.
For it is clear that on this view a man will not be a builder
unless he is building (for to be a builder is to be able to build),
and so with the other arts. If, then, it is impossible to have such
arts if one has not at some time learnt and acquired them, and it is
then impossible not to have them if one has not sometime lost them
(either by forgetfulness or by some accident or by time; for it cannot
be by the destruction of the object, for that lasts for ever), a man
will not have the art when he has ceased to use it, and yet he may
immediately build again; how then will he have got the art? And
similarly with regard to lifeless things; nothing will be either
cold or hot or sweet or perceptible at all if people are not
perceiving it; so that the upholders of this view will have to
maintain the doctrine of Protagoras
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