Книга только для ознакомления
.
Again, coming from certain things means in one sense that these
are still to be found in the product, and in another that they are
not; which sense does number come from these elements? Only things
that are generated can come from elements which are present in them.
Does number come, then, from its elements as from seed? But nothing
can be excreted from that which is indivisible. Does it come from
its contrary, its contrary not persisting? But all things that come in
this way come also from something else which does persist. Since,
then, one thinker places the 1 as contrary to plurality, and another
places it as contrary to the unequal, treating the 1 as equal,
number must be being treated as coming from contraries. There is,
then, something else that persists, from which and from one contrary
the compound is or has come to be. Again, why in the world do the
other things that come from contraries, or that have contraries,
perish (even when all of the contrary is used to produce them),
while number does not? Nothing is said about this. Yet whether present
or not present in the compound the contrary destroys it, e.g. 'strife'
destroys the 'mixture' (yet it should not; for it is not to that
that is contrary).
Once more, it has not been determined at all in which way
numbers are the causes of substances and of being-whether (1) as
boundaries (as points are of spatial magnitudes)
|
