The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

categories are posterior to substance. Again, (d) elements are
not predicated of the things of which they are elements, but many
and few are predicated both apart and together of number, and long
and short of the line, and both broad and narrow apply to the
plane. If there is a plurality, then, of which the one term, viz.
few, is always predicated, e.g. 2 (which cannot be many, for if it
were many, 1 would be few), there must be also one which is
absolutely many, e.g. 10 is many (if there is no number which is
greater than 10), or 10,000. How then, in view of this, can number
consist of few and many? Either both ought to be predicated of it,
or neither; but in fact only the one or the other is
predicated.
<
    div id="section152" class="section" title="2">
2
    We must inquire generally, whether eternal things can consist of
elements. If they do, they will have matter; for everything that
consists of elements is composite. Since, then, even if a thing
exists for ever, out of that of which it consists it would
necessarily also, if it had come into being, have come into being,
and since everything comes to be what it comes to be out of that
which is it potentially (for it could not have come to be out of
that which had not this capacity, nor could it consist of such
elements), and since the potential can be either actual or
not,-this being so, however everlasting number or anything else
that has matter is, it must be capable of not existing, just as
that which is any number of years old is as capable of not existing
as that which is a day old; if this is capable of not existing, so
is that which has lasted for a time so long that it has no limit.
They cannot, then, be eternal, since that which is capable of not
existing is not eternal, as we had occasion to show in another
context. If that which we are now saying is true universally-that
no substance is eternal unless it is actuality-and if the elements
are matter that underlies substance, no eternal substance can have
elements present in it, of which it consists.
    There are some who describe the element which acts with the One
as an indefinite dyad, and object to ‘the unequal’, reasonably
enough, because of the ensuing difficulties; but they have got rid
only of those objections which inevitably arise from the treatment
of the unequal, i.e. the relative, as an element; those which arise
apart from this opinion must confront even these thinkers, whether
it is ideal number, or mathematical, that they construct out of
those elements.
    There are many causes which led them off into these
explanations, and especially the fact that they framed the
difficulty in an obsolete form. For they thought that all things
that are would be one (viz. Being itself), if one did not join
issue with and refute the saying of Parmenides:
‘For never will this he proved, that things that are not
are.’
    They thought it necessary to prove that that which is not is;
for only thus-of that which is and something else-could the things
that are be composed, if they are many.
    But, first, if ‘being’ has many senses (for it means sometimes
substance, sometimes that it is of a certain quality, sometimes
that it is of a certain quantity, and at other times the other
categories), what sort of ‘one’, then, are all the things that are,
if non-being is to be supposed not to be? Is it the substances that
are one, or the affections and similarly the other categories as
well, or all together-so that the ‘this’ and the ‘such’ and the ‘so
much’ and the other categories that indicate each some one class of
being will all be one? But it is strange, or rather impossible,
that the coming into play of a single thing should bring it about
that part of that which is is a ‘this’, part a ‘such’, part a ‘so
much’, part a ‘here’.
    Secondly, of what sort of non-being and being do the things that
are consist? For ‘nonbeing’ also has many senses, since ‘being’
has; and ‘not being a man’ means not being a certain substance,
‘not being straight’ not being of a certain quality, ‘not being
three cubits long’ not being of a certain quantity. What sort of
being and non-being, then, by their union pluralize the things that
are? This thinker means by the non-being the union of which with
being pluralizes the things that are, the false and the character
of falsity. This is also why it used to be said that we must assume
something that is false, as geometers assume the line