ARISTOTLE AND THE EARLIER PERIPATETICS vol.I by Eduard Zeller, B.F.C.Costelloe 1897

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METAPHY^CS 297
determinations of being in an inner unity, while the
corresponding relation in sensible things explained
itself, according to Plato, by impact.
4. Equally different were the views held as to the
passing of the one into another—that is, as to the theory
of Change and Becoming. How can being become
not-being, or not-being being ? How can anything
come to be or cease to be ? How is movement possible,
or change ?
Such were the questions that Parmenides
and Zeno had asked in doubt, and the Megarians and
the Sophists had repeated their questionings. The like
difficulties drove Bmpedocles and Anaxagoras, Leucippus
and Democritus to
explain the coming to be and
ceasing to be of all things by the combinations and
separations of unchangeable matter. Plato himself so
far agreed with them that he confined change to the
sphere of appearances, and excepted from it all that
was truly actual.
Aristotle has all these questions clearly in view.
To the first two problems related most ' of the diropiai
with which he opens his great work on Metaphysics,
after the introductory discussions of the first book. Are
sensible things the only essential being, or is there
besides them some other ? Is the ' other ' of one kind; or
is it manifold like the Ideas and mathematical entities
of Plato ? 2 The limitation of Being to sensible things
is contradicted by the series of arguments on which Plato
had already based his Ideal Theory : such as, that the
1
With the exception of those
2
MetapA. iii. 2, 997, a, 34 sqq.
just mentioned, which are con- (xi. 1, 1059, a, 38, c. 2, 1060, b,
cerned with the office of the First 23), iii. 6, viii. 2.
Philosophy in general.
298 ARISTOTLE
particular things of sense, passing and indistinct as
they are, can be no object of knowledge ; ' and that all
the world of sense, as passing, presupposes an eternal
as moved, presupposes an unmoved—as formed, presupposes
a forming cause. 2 These Platonic assumptions,
however, as we presently find, are beset by all manner
of difficulties. The problem returns in the form of the
question 3 whether the ultimate grounds of things are
to be sought for in their genera, or in
their constituent
parts—the latter being the basis of their material
conditions, the other the basis of their formal determinations.
4 For either view plausible arguments may
be adduced. On the one hand there is the analogy of
corporeal things, whose constituent parts we name when
we have to explain their character. On the other
hand there are the conditions of knowledge, which we
attain to by a process of determination through concepts
in the assignment of genera and species. And as
between these again there arises
immediately the question,
whether the highest genera or the lowest species
ought to be treated as the true princvpia. The former
would be universal, including all individual existence as
an ultimate principle should do. The latter would be
determinate conceptions, and out of such only could the
individual in its peculiarity of character be obtained. 5
1
Metaph. vii. 15, 1039, b, 27; b, 21).
iv. 5, 1009, a, 36, 1010, a, 3, of. i.
4 Vide swpra, ch. v.
6, 987, a, 34; xiii. 9, 1086, a, 37,
a
Metwph. iii. 998, b, 14 sqq.
b, 8. (xi. 1, 1059, b, 34). Among the
2
Ibid. iii. 4, 999, b, 3 sqq. varied and often intricate forms
3
Metapli. Hi. 3 : irSrepov Se? of Aristotle's dialectic, it is only
tA 7€i/7j crToixeia Ka! apxas viroKan- possible to state here the leading
fidvetv fj fiaWov ££ Siv ivvirapx^vruv line of reasoning.
4 %Kaarov vpStrov (xi. 1, 1059,