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. simplicity. Therefore a science which abstracts
from spatial magnitude is more precise than one which takes it into
account; and a science is most precise if it abstracts from
movement, but if it takes account of movement, it is most precise if
it deals with the primary movement, for this is the simplest; and of
this again uniform movement is the simplest form.
The same account may be given of harmonics and optics; for neither
considers its objects qua sight or qua voice, but qua lines and
numbers; but the latter are attributes proper to the former. And
mechanics too proceeds in the same way. Therefore if we suppose
attributes separated from their fellow attributes and make any inquiry
concerning them as such, we shall not for this reason be in error, any
more than when one draws a line on the ground and calls it a foot long
when it is not; for the error is not included in the premisses.
Each question will be best investigated in this way-by setting
up by an act of separation what is not separate, as the
arithmetician and the geometer do. For a man qua man is one
indivisible thing; and the arithmetician supposed one indivisible
thing, and then considered whether any attribute belongs to a man
qua indivisible. But the geometer treats him neither qua man nor qua
indivisible, but as a solid. For evidently the properties which
would have belonged to him even if perchance he had not been
indivisible, can belong to him even apart from these attributes
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