Kitap 3
34
Moreover, even if one supposes the case to be such that number is generated, as some say, from the One itself and from something else which is not one, we must none the less inquire why and how it is that the thing generated will be at one time number and at another magnitude, if the not-one was inequality and the same principle in both cases.The reference is to the Platonists. Cf. Aristot. Met. 14.1.5, 6; Aristot. Met. 14.2.13, 14. For it is not clear how magnitude can be generated either from One and this principle, or from a number and this principle.For the answer to this problem see Aristot. Met. 7.16.3, 4; Aristot. Met. 10.2; and cf. Aristot. Met. 13.8.
1
(13.) Out of this arises the question whether numbers, bodies, planes and points are substances or not. If not, the question of what Being is, what the substances of things are, baffles us; for modifications and motions and relations and dispositions and ratios do not seem to indicate the substance of anything; they are all predicated of a substrate, and none of them is a definite thing.
2
As for those things which might be especially supposed to indicate substance—water, earth, fire and air, of which composite bodies are composed— their heat and cold and the like are modifications, not substances; and it is only the body which undergoes these modifications that persists as something real and a kind of substance.
