Kitap 14
1
If, then, it is impossible both not to include the Good among the first principles, and to include it in this way, it is clear that the first principles are not being rightly represented, nor are the primary substances. Nor is a certain thinkerEvidently Speusippus; cf. Aristot. Met. 14.4.3. right in his assumption when he likens the principles of the universe to that of animals and plants, on the ground that the more perfect forms are always produced from those which are indeterminate and imperfect, and is led by this to assert that this is true also of the ultimate principles; so that not even unity itself is a real thing.Speusippus argued that since all things are originally imperfect, unity, which is the first principle, must be imperfect, and therefore distinct from the good. Aristotle objects that the imperfect does not really exist, and so Speusippus deprives his first principle of reality.
2
He is wrong; for even in the natural world the principles from which these things are derived are perfect and complete—for it is man that begets man; the seed does not come first.Cf. Aristot. Met. 9.8.5. It is absurd also to generate space simultaneously with the mathematical solids (for space is peculiar to particular things, which is why they are separable in space, whereas the objects of mathematics have no position) and to say that they must be somewhere, and yet not explain what their spatial position is.
