Book 14
13
All these views are irrational; they conflict both with one another and with sound logic, and it seems that in them we have a case of Simonides’ long storyThe exact reference is uncertain, but Aristotle probably means Simonides of Ceos. Cf. Simonides Fr. 189 (Bergk).; for men have recourse to the long story, such as slaves tell, when they have nothing satisfactory to say.
14
The very elements too, the Great and Small, seem to protest at being dragged in; for they cannot possibly generate numbers except rising powers of 2.Assuming that the Great-and-Small, or indeterminate dyad, is duplicative (Aristot. Met. 13.7.18).
14
It is absurd also, or rather it is one of the impossibilities of this theory, to introduce generation of things which are eternal.
15
There is no reason to doubt whether the Pythagoreans do or do not introduce it; for they clearly state that when the One had been constituted—whether out of planes or superficies or seed or out of something that they cannot explain—immediately the nearest part of the Infinite began to be drawn in and limited by the Limit.Cf. Aristot. Physics 3.4, Aristot. Physics 4.6, and Burnet, E.G.P. sect. 53.
