Book 14
2
A difficulty, and a discredit to those who make light of the difficulty, arises out of the question how the elements and first principles are related to the the Good and the Beautiful. The difficulty is this: whether any of the elements is such as we mean when weAristotle speaks as a Platonist. See Introduction. speak of the Good or the Supreme Good, or whether on the contrary these are later in generation than the elements.
3
It would seem that there is an agreement between the mythologists and some present-day thinkers,The Pythagoreans and Speusippus; cf. Aristot. Met. 12.7.10. who deny that there is such an element, and say that it was only after some evolution in the natural order of things that both the Good and the Beautiful appeared. They do this to avoid a real difficulty which confronts those who hold, as some do, that unity is a first principle.
4
This difficulty arises not from ascribing goodness to the first principle as an attribute, but from treating unity as a principle, and a principle in the sense of an element, and then deriving number from unity. The early poets agree with this view in so far as they assert that it was not the original forces—such as Night, Heaven, Chaos or Ocean—but Zeus who was king and ruler.
