Книга только для ознакомления
. This in
itself, then, would be one difficulty in the view we have mentioned.
10
Let us now mention a point which presents a certain difficulty
both to those who believe in the Ideas and to those who do not, and
which was stated before, at the beginning, among the problems. If we
do not suppose substances to be separate, and in the way in which
individual things are said to be separate, we shall destroy
substance in the sense in which we understand 'substance'; but if we
conceive substances to be separable, how are we to conceive their
elements and their principles?
If they are individual and not universal, (a) real things will
be just of the same number as the elements, and (b) the elements
will not be knowable. For (a) let the syllables in speech be
substances, and their elements elements of substances; then there must
be only one 'ba' and one of each of the syllables, since they are
not universal and the same in form but each is one in number and a
'this' and not a kind possessed of a common name (and again they
suppose that the 'just what a thing is' is in each case one). And if
the syllables are unique, so too are the parts of which they
consist; there will not, then, be more a's than one, nor more than one
of any of the other elements, on the same principle on which an
identical syllable cannot exist in the plural number. But if this is
so, there will not be other things existing besides the elements,
but only the elements
|
