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Aristotle - Metaphysics
Atec Февраль 16 2008 19:57:08
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. But these
characteristics cannot belong at the same time to the same thing.
If the 1-itself must be unitary (for it differs in nothing from
other 1's except that it is the starting-point), and the 2 is
divisible but the unit is not, the unit must be liker the 1-itself
than the 2 is. But if the unit is liker it, it must be liker to the
unit than to the 2; therefore each of the units in 2 must be prior
to the 2. But they deny this; at least they generate the 2 first.
Again, if the 2-itself is a unity and the 3-itself is one also, both
form a 2. From what, then, is this 2 produced?
9
Since there is not contact in numbers, but succession, viz.
between the units between which there is nothing, e.g. between those
in 2 or in 3 one might ask whether these succeed the 1-itself or
not, and whether, of the terms that succeed it, 2 or either of the
units in 2 is prior.
Similar difficulties occur with regard to the classes of things
posterior to number,-the line, the plane, and the solid. For some
construct these out of the species of the 'great and small'; e.g.
lines from the 'long and short', planes from the 'broad and narrow',
masses from the 'deep and shallow'; which are species of the 'great
and small'. And the originative principle of such things which answers
to the 1 different thinkers describe in different ways, And in these
also the impossibilities, the fictions, and the contradictions of
all probability are seen to be innumerable
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