The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (156 page)

4
     These thinkers say there is no generation of the odd number, which evidently implies that there
is
generation of the even; and some present the even as produced first from unequals—the great and the small—when these are equalized.
(25)
The inequality, then, must belong to them
before
they are equalized. If they had always been equalized, they would not have been unequal before; for there is nothing before that which is always. Therefore evidently they are not giving their account of the generation of numbers merely to assist contemplation of their nature.
²⁷

A difficulty, and a reproach to any one who finds it
no
difficulty,
(30)
are contained in the question how the elements and the principles are related to the good and the beautiful; the difficulty is this, whether any of the elements is such a thing as we mean by the good itself and the best, or this is not so, but these are later in origin than the elements.
The theologians seem to agree with some thinkers of the present day,
²⁸
who answer the question in the negative, and say that both the good and the beautiful appear in the nature of things only when that nature has made some progress.
(35)
(This they do to avoid a real objection which confronts those who say, as some do, that the one is a first principle.
[1091b]
The objection arises not from their ascribing goodness to the first principle as an attribute, but from their making the one a principle—and a principle in the sense of an element—and generating number from the one.) The old poets agree with this inasmuch as they say that not those who are first in time, e. g. Night and Heaven or Chaos or Ocean,
(5)
reign and rule, but Zeus. These poets, however, are led to speak thus only because they think of the rulers of the world as
changing
; for those of them who combine the two characters in that they do not use mythical language throughout, e. g. Pherecydes and some others, make the original generating agent the Best, and so do the Magi,
(10)
and some of the later sages also, e. g. both Empedocles and Anaxagoras, of whom one made love an element, and the other made reason a principle. Of those who maintain the existence of the
unchangeable
substances some say the One itself is the good itself; but they thought its substance lay mainly in its unity.

This, then, is the problem—which of the two ways of speaking is right.
(15)
It would be strange if to that which is primary and eternal and most self-sufficient this very quality—self-sufficiency and self-maintenance—belongs primarily in some other way than
as a good.
But indeed it can be for no other reason indestructible or self-sufficient than because its nature is good. Therefore to say that the first principle is good is probably correct; but that this principle should be the One or,
(20)
if not that, at least an element, and an element of numbers, is impossible. Powerful objections arise, to avoid which some have given up the theory
²⁹
(viz. those who agree that the One is a first principle and element, but only of
mathematical
number). For on this view all the units become identical with species of good, and there is a great profusion of goods.
(25)
Again, if the Forms are numbers, all the Forms are identical with species of good. But let a man assume Ideas of anything he pleases. If these are Ideas only of goods, the Ideas will not be substances; but if the Ideas are also Ideas of substances, all animals and plants and all individuals that share in Ideas will be good.

These absurdities follow, and it also follows that the contrary element,
(30)
whether it is plurality or the unequal, i. e. the great and small,
is the bad-itself. (Hence one thinker
³⁰
avoided attaching the good to the One, because it would necessarily follow, since generation is from contraries, that badness is the fundamental nature of plurality; while others
³¹
say inequality is the nature of the bad.
(35)
) It follows, then, that all things partake of the bad except one—the One itself, and that numbers partake of it in a more undiluted form than spatial magnitudes, and that the bad is the space in which the good is realized,
³²
and that it partakes in and desires that which tends to destroy it; for contrary tends to destroy contrary.
[1092a]
And if, as we were saying,
³³
the matter is that which is potentially each thing, e. g. that of actual fire is that which is potentially fire, the bad will be just the potentially good.

All these objections,
(5)
then, follow, partly because they make every principle an element, partly because they make contraries principles, partly because they make the One a principle, partly because they treat the numbers as the first substances, and as capable of existing apart, and as Forms.

5
     If, then, it is equally impossible not to put the good among the first principles and to put it among them in this way,
(10)
evidently the principles are not being correctly described, nor are the first substances. Nor does any one conceive the matter correctly if he compares the principles of the universe to that of animals and plants, on the ground that the more complete always comes from the indefinite and incomplete—which is what leads this thinker
³⁴
to say that this is also true of the first principles of reality, so that the One itself is not even an existing thing.
(15)
This is incorrect, for even in this world of animals and plants the principles from which these come are complete; for it is a man that produces a man, and the seed is not first.

It is out of place, also, to generate place simultaneously with the mathematical solids (for place is peculiar to the individual things,
(20)
and hence they are separate in place; but mathematical objects are nowhere), and to say that they must be somewhere, but not say what kind of thing their place is.

Those who say that existing things come from elements and that the first of existing things are the numbers, should have first distinguished the senses in which one thing comes from another, and then said in which sense number comes from its first principles.

By intermixture? But (1) not everything is capable of intermixture,
(25)
and (2) that which is produced by it is different from its elements, and
on this view the one will not remain separate or a distinct entity; but they want it to be so.

By juxtaposition, like a syllable? But then (1) the elements must have position; and (2) he who thinks of number will be able to think of the unity and the plurality apart; number then will be this—a unit
and
plurality, or the one
and
the unequal.

Again, coming from certain things means in one sense that these are still to be found in the product, and in another that they are not; in which sense does number come from these elements? Only things that are generated can come from elements which are present in them.
(30)
Does number come, then, from its elements as from seed? But nothing can be excreted from that which is indivisible. Does it come from its contrary, its contrary not persisting? But all things that come in this way come also from something else which does persist.
³⁵
Since, then,
(35)
one thinker
³⁶
places the 1 as contrary to plurality, and another
³⁷
places it as contrary to the unequal, treating the 1 as equal, number must be being treated as coming from contraries.
[1092b]
There is, then, something else that persists, from which and from one contrary the compound is or has come to be. Again, why in the world do the other things that come from contraries, or that have contraries, perish (even when all of the contrary is used to produce them), while number does not? Nothing is said about this. Yet whether present or not present in the compound the contrary destroys it,
(5)
e. g. ‘strife’ destroys the ‘mixture’
³⁸
(yet it
should
not; for it is not to that that it is contrary).
³⁹

Once more, it has not been determined at all in which way numbers are the causes of substances and of being—whether (1) as boundaries (as points are of spatial magnitudes). This is how Eurytus decided what was the number of what (e. g. one of man and another of horse),
(10)
viz. by imitating the figures of living things with pebbles, as some people bring numbers into the forms of triangle and square. Or (2) is it because harmony is a ratio of numbers, and so is man and everything else? But how are the attributes—white and sweet and hot—numbers? Evidently it is not the numbers that are the essence or the causes of the form; for the ratio is the essence,
(15)
while the number is the matter. e. g. the essence of flesh or bone is number only in this way, ‘three parts of fire and two of earth’.
⁴⁰
And a number, whatever number it is, is always a number of certain things, either of parts of fire or earth or of units; but the essence is that there is so much of one
thing to so much of another in the mixture; and this is no longer a number but a ratio of mixture of numbers,
(20)
whether these are corporeal or of any other kind.

Number, then, whether it be number in general or the number which consists of abstract units, is neither the cause as agent, nor the matter,
(25)
nor the ratio and form of things. Nor, of course, is it the final cause.

6
     One might also raise the question what the good is that things get from numbers because their composition is expressible by a number, either by one which is easily calculable or by an odd number. For in fact honey-water is no more wholesome if it is mixed in the proportion of three times three, but it would do more good if it were in no particular ratio but well diluted than if it were numerically expressible but strong.
(30)
Again, the ratios of mixtures are expressed by the
adding
of numbers, not by mere numbers; e. g. it is ‘three parts to two’, not ‘three times two’. For in any multiplication the genus of the things multiplied must be the same; therefore the product 1 × 2 × 3 must be measurable by 1, and 4 × 5 × 6 by 4, and therefore all products into which the same factor enters must be measurable by that factor.
(35)
The number of fire, then, cannot be 2 × 5 × 3 × 6, and at the same time that of water 2 × 3.
[1093a]

If all things must share in number, it must follow that many things are the same, and the same number must belong to one thing and to another. Is number the cause, then, and does the thing exist because of its number, or is this not certain? e. g. the motions of the sun have a number,
(5)
and again those of the moon—yes, and the life and prime of each animal. Why, then, should not some of these numbers be squares, some cubes, and some equal, others double? There is no reason why they should not, and indeed they must move within these limits, since all things were assumed to share in number. And it was assumed that things that differed might fall under the same number.
(10)
Therefore if the same number had belonged to certain things, these would have been the same as one another, since they would have had the same form of number; e. g. sun and moon would have been the same. But why need these numbers be causes? There are seven vowels, the scale consists of seven strings, the Pleiades are seven,
(15)
at seven animals lose their teeth (at least some do, though some do not), and the champions who fought against Thebes were seven. Is it then because the number is the kind of number it is, that the champions were seven or the Pleiad consists of seven stars? Surely the champions were seven because there were seven gates or for some other reason, and the Pleiad
we
count as
seven, as we count the Bear as twelve, while other peoples count more stars in both. Nay, they even say that
, Ψ, and Z are concords,
(20)
and that because there are three concords, the double consonants also are three. They quite neglect the fact that there might be a thousand such letters; for one symbol might be assigned to ΓP. But if they say that each of these three is equal to two of the other letters, and no other is so, and if the cause is that there are three parts of the mouth and one letter is in each applied to sigma, it is for this reason that there are only three, not because the concords are three; since as a matter of fact the concords are more than three,
(25)
but of double consonants there cannot be more. These people are like the old-fashioned Homeric scholars, who see small resemblances but neglect great ones. Some say that there are many such cases, e. g. that the middle strings are represented by nine and eight,
⁴¹
(30)
and that the epic verse has seventeen syllables, which is equal in number to the two strings, and that the scansion is, in the right,
⁴²
half of the line nine syllables, and in the left eight.
[1093b]
And they say that the distance in the letters from alpha to omega is equal to that from the lowest note of the flute to the highest, and that the number of this note is equal to that of the whole choir of heaven.
(5)
It may be suspected that no one could find difficulty either in stating such analogies or in finding them in eternal things, since they can be found even in perishable things.

But the lauded characteristics of numbers, and the contraries of these, and generally the mathematical relations, as some describe them, making them causes of nature, seem, when we inspect them in
this
way,
(10)
to vanish; for none of them is a cause in any of the senses that have been distinguished in reference to the first principles.
⁴³
In a sense, however, they make it plain that goodness belongs to numbers, and that the odd, the straight, the square, the potencies of certain numbers, are in the column of the beautiful. For the seasons and a particular kind of number go together; and the other agreements that they collect from the theorems of mathematics all have this meaning.
⁴⁴
(15)
Hence they are like coincidences. For they are accidents, but the things that agree are all appropriate to one another, and one by analogy. For in each category of being an analogous term is found—as the straight is
in length,
(20)
so is the level in surface, perhaps the odd in number, and the white in colour.

Again, it is not the
ideal
numbers that are the causes of musical phenomena and the like (for equal ideal numbers differ from one another in form; for even the units do); so that we need not assume Ideas for this reason at least.

These, then, are the results of the theory, and yet more might be brought together.
(25)
The fact that our opponents have much trouble with the generation of numbers and can in no way make a system of them, seems to indicate that the objects of mathematics are not separable from sensible things, as some say, and that they are not the first principles.