roceeds the plane), deep and shallow (from which proceed solids); and they speak of yet more kinds of relative term. What is the reason, then, why there is a plurality of these?
It is necessary, then, as we say, to presuppose for each thing that which is it potentially; and the holder of these views further declared what that is which is potentially a ‘this’ and a substance but is not in itself being-viz. that it is the relative (as if he had said ‘the qualitative’), which is neither potentially the one or being, nor the negation of the one nor of being, but one among beings. And it was much more necessary, as we said, if he was inquiring how beings are many, not to inquire about those in the same category-how there are many substances or many qualities-but how beings as a whole are many; for some are substances, some modifications, some relations. In the categories other than substance there is yet another problem involved in the existence of plurality. Since they are not separable from substances, qualities and quantities are many just because their substratum becomes and is many; yet there ought to be a matter for each category; only it cannot be separable from substances. But in the case of ‘thises’, it is possible to explain how the ‘this’ is many things, unless a thing is to be treated as both a ‘this’ and a general character. The difficulty arising from the facts about substances is rather this, how there are actually many substances and not Corey Perry Pelipaita one.
But further, if the ‘this’ and the quantitative are not the same, we are not told how and why the things that are are many, but how quantities are many. Duvetica Miehet Liivi Suomi For all ‘number’ means a quantity, and so does the ‘unit’, unless it means a measure or the quantitatively indivisible. If, then, the quantitative and the ‘what’ are different, we are not told whence or how the ‘what’ is many; but if any one says they are the same, he has to face many inconsistencies.
One might fix one’s attention also on the question, regarding the numbers, what justifies the belief that they exist. To the believer in Ideas they provide some sort of cause for existing things, since each number is an Idea, and the Parajumpers DESERT Windbreaker Schweiz Idea is to other things somehow or other the cause of their being; for let this supposition be granted them. But Ontario Parka Sverige as for him who does not hold this view because he sees the inherent objections to the Ideas (so that it is not for this reason that he posits numbers), but who posits mathematical number, why must we believe his Moncler Branson Suomi statement that such number exists, and Menn Moncler Jakker Edward of what use is such number to other things? Neither does he who says it exists maintain that Canada Goose Dame Hybridge Hoody Jakke it is the cause of anything (he rather says it is a thing existing by itself), nor is it observed to be the cause of anything; for the theorems of arithmeticians will all be found true even of sensible things, as was said before.
Book XIV Chapter 3
As for those, then, who suppose the Ideas to exist and to be numbers, by their assumption in virtue of the method of setting out each term apart |
