Kitap 2
4
If there had been no Timotheus,Of Miletus, 446 (?)—357 B.C. we should not possess much of our music; and if there had been no Phrynis,Of Mytilene; he is referred to as still alive in Aristoph. Cl. 971. Both Phrynis and Timotheus are criticized in the fragment of Pherecrates Chirontranslated by Rogers in the appendix to his ed. of the Clouds. there would have been no Timotheus. It is just the same in the case of those who have theorized about reality: we have derived certain views from some of them, and they in turn were indebted to others.
5
Moreover, philosophy is rightly called a knowledge of Truth. The object of theoretic knowledge is truth, while that of practical knowledge is action; for even when they are investigating how a thing is so, practical men study not the eternal principle but the relative and immediate application.
6
But we cannot know the truth apart from the cause. Now every thing through which a common quality is communicated to other things is itself of all those things in the highest degree possessed of that quality (e.g. fire is hottest, because it is the cause of heat in everything else); hence that also is most true which causes all subsequent things to be true.
