[1010a]
[1]
But the reason why these men hold this
view is that although they studied the truth about reality, they
supposed that reality is confined to sensible things, in which the
nature of the Indeterminate, i.e. of Being in the sense which we have
explained,1 is abundantly
present. (Thus their statements, though plausible, are not
true;this form of
the criticism is more suitable than that which Epicharmus2 applied to
Xenophanes.) And further, observing that all this indeterminate
substance is in motion, and that no true predication can be made of
that which changes, they supposed that it is impossible to make any
true statement about that which is in all ways and entirely
changeable.For it
was from this supposition that there blossomed forth the most extreme
view of those which we have mentioned, that of the professed followers
of Heraclitus, and such as Cratylus held, who ended by thinking that
one need not say anything, and only moved his finger; and who
criticized Heraclitus for saying that one cannot enter the same river
twice,3 for he himself
held that it cannot be done even once.But we shall
reply to this theory also that although that which is changeable
supplies them, when it changes, with some real ground for supposing
that it "is not," yet there is something debatable in this; for that
which is shedding any quality retains something of that which is being
shed, and something of that which is coming to be must already
exist.
[20]
And in general if a thing is
ceasing to be, there will be something there which is ;
and if a thing is coming to be, that from which it comes and by which
it is generated must be ; and this cannot go on to
infinity. But let us leave this line of argument and remark that
quantitative and qualitative change are not the same.Let it be granted that there
is nothing permanent in respect of quantity; but it is by the
form that we recognize everything. And again those
who hold the theory that we are attacking deserve censure in that they
have maintained about the whole material universe what they have
observed in the case of a mere minority of sensible things.For it is only the realm of
sense around us which continues subject to destruction and generation,
but this is a practically negligible part of the whole; so that it
would have been fairer for them to acquit the former on the ground of
the latter than to condemn the latter on account of the
former.Further, we shall
obviously say to these thinkers too the same as we said some time
ago4; for we must prove to them and
convince them that there is a kind of nature that is not
moved(and yet those
who claim that things can at once be and not be are logically
compelled to admit rather that all things are at rest than that they
are in motion; for there is nothing for them to change into, since
everything exists in everything).
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