Книга только для ознакомления
. But all things which
are generated from their contraries involve an underlying subject; a
subject, then, must be present in the case of contraries, if anywhere.
All contraries, then, are always predicable of a subject, and none can
exist apart, but just as appearances suggest that there is nothing
contrary to substance, argument confirms this. No contrary, then, is
the first principle of all things in the full sense; the first
principle is something different.
But these thinkers make one of the contraries matter, some
making the unequal which they take to be the essence of
plurality-matter for the One, and others making plurality matter for
the One. (The former generate numbers out of the dyad of the
unequal, i.e. of the great and small, and the other thinker we have
referred to generates them out of plurality, while according to both
it is generated by the essence of the One.) For even the philosopher
who says the unequal and the One are the elements, and the unequal
is a dyad composed of the great and small, treats the unequal, or
the great and the small, as being one, and does not draw the
distinction that they are one in definition, but not in number. But
they do not describe rightly even the principles which they call
elements, for some name the great and the small with the One and treat
these three as elements of numbers, two being matter, one the form;
while others name the many and few, because the great and the small
are more appropriate in their nature to magnitude than to number;
and others name rather the universal character common to these-'that
which exceeds and that which is exceeded'
|
