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Those who suppose, as the Pythagoreans and Speusippus do, that
supreme beauty and goodness are not present in the beginning,
because the beginnings both of plants and of animals are causes, but
beauty and completeness are in the effects of these, are wrong in
their opinion. For the seed comes from other individuals which are
prior and complete, and the first thing is not seed but the complete
being; e.g. we must say that before the seed there is a man,-not the
man produced from the seed, but another from whom the seed comes.
It is clear then from what has been said that there is a substance
which is eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible things. It
has been shown also that this substance cannot have any magnitude, but
is without parts and indivisible (for it produces movement through
infinite time, but nothing finite has infinite power; and, while every
magnitude is either infinite or finite, it cannot, for the above
reason, have finite magnitude, and it cannot have infinite magnitude
because there is no infinite magnitude at all). But it has also been
shown that it is impassive and unalterable; for all the other
changes are posterior to change of place.
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It is clear, then, why these things are as they are. But we must
not ignore the question whether we have to suppose one such
substance or more than one, and if the latter, how many; we must
also mention, regarding the opinions expressed by others, that they
have said nothing about the number of the substances that can even
be clearly stated
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