The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

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, 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 (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. 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, whether it is plurality or the unequal, i.e. the great and
small, is the bad-itself. (Hence one thinker 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 say inequality is the nature of
the bad.) 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, and that it partakes in and
desires that which tends to destroy it; for contrary tends to
destroy contrary. And if, as we were saying, 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, 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.
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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, 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 to say
that this is also true of the first principles of reality, so that
the One itself is not even an existing thing. 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, 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, 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; which sense does number come from these elements? Only things
that are generated can come from elements which are present in
them. 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