Page:Metaphysics by Aristotle Ross 1908 (deannotated).djvu/19

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CONTENTS

Ch.
magnitudes from similar principles. The criticism of ideal numbers summed up. The upholders of Ideas make them at once universal and individual.
10. Are the first principles of substances individual or universal?
Ν.
1. The principles cannot be contraries. The Platonists in making them contraries treated one of the contraries as matter. Various forms of this theory. The nature of unity and plurality expounded.
2. Eternal substances cannot be compounded out of elements. The object of the Platonists is to explain the presence of plurality in the world, but in this they do not succeed. What justifies the belief in the separate existence of numbers?
3. Difficulties in the various theories of number. The Pythagoreans ascribe generation to numbers, which are eternal.
4. The relation between the first principles and the good.
5. How is number supposed to be derived from its elements? How is it the cause of substances?
6. The causal agency ascribed to numbers is purely fanciful.

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