[
1075b]
[1]
whether as an end or as a moving
cause or as form.
Empedocles theory is also absurd, for
he identifies the Good with Love.
1 This is a principle both as causing motion (since
it combines) and as matter (since it is part of the mixture).
2 Now even
if it so happens that the same thing is a principle both as matter and
as causing motion, still the essence of the two principles is not the
same. In which respect, then, is Love a principle? And it is also
absurd that Strife should be imperishable; strife is the very essence
of evil.
3
Anaxagoras makes the Good a principle as causing motion; for Mind
moves things, but moves them for some end, and therefore there must be
some other Good
4—unless it is as we say; for on our view
the art of medicine is in a sense health.
5 It is absurd also not to provide a contrary
for the Good, i.e. for Mind.
6
But all those who recognize the contraries fail to make use of the
contraries, unless we systematize their theories.And none of them explains why some
things are perishable and others imperishable; for they make all
existing things come from the same first principles.
7 Again, some
8 make existing things come from
not-being, while others,
9
to avoid this necessity, make all things one. Again, no one explains
why there must always be generation, and what the cause of generation
is.
Moreover, those who posit two principles must
admit another superior principle,
10 and so must the
exponents of the Forms; for what made or makes particulars participate
in the Forms?
[20]
And on all
other views it follows necessarily that there must be something which
is contrary to Wisdom or supreme knowledge, but on ours it does not.
For there is no contrary to that which is primary,since all contraries involve matter,
and that which has matter exists potentially; and the ignorance which
is contrary to Wisdom would tend towards the contrary of the object of
Wisdom; but that which is primary has no contrary.
Further, if there is to be nothing else besides
sensible things, there will be no first principle, no order, no
generation, and no celestial motions, but every principle will be
based upon another,
11 as in
the accounts of all the cosmologists and physicists.And if the Forms or numbers
are to exist, they will be causes of nothing; or if not of nothing, at
least not of motion.
Further, how can
extension, i.e. a continuum, be produced from that which is
unextended? Number cannot, either as a moving or as a formal cause,
produce a continuum. Moreover, no contrary can be essentially
productive and kinetic, for then it would be possible for it not to
exist;and further,
the act of production would in any case be posterior to the
potentiality. Therefore the world of reality is not eternal. But there
are real objects which are eternal. Therefore one of these premisses
must be rejected. We have described how this may be done.
12Further, in
virtue of what the numbers, or soul and body, or in general the form
and the object, are one, no one attempts to explain; nor is it
possible to do so except on our theory, that it is the moving cause
that makes them one.
13
As for those
14 who maintain
that mathematical number is the primary reality,