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[1087a]
[29]
With regard to this kind of
substance,1 then, let the foregoing account
suffice. All thinkers make the first principles contraries; as in the
realm of natural objects, so too in respect of the unchangeable
substances.Now if
nothing can be prior to the first principle of all things, that first
principle cannot be first principle if it is an attribute of something
else. This would be as absurd as to say that "white" is the first
principle, not qua anything else but qua white, and yet that it is predicable of a
subject, and is white because it is an attribute of something else;
because the latter will be prior to it.Moreover, all things are generated from
contraries as from a substrate, and therefore contraries must most
certainly have a substrate.
1 i.e., the Platonic Ideas or numbers, which they regarded as unchangeable substances. There is, however, no definite transition to a fresh subject at this point. The criticisms of the Ideas or numbers as substances, and of the Platonic first principles, have not been grouped systematically in Books 13 and 14. Indeed there is so little distinction in subject matter between the two books that in some Mss. 14 was made to begin at 13.9.10. (Syrianus ad loc.). See Introduction.
Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vols.17, 18, translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1933, 1989.
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