The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

‘what is’ is one and many, like
Empedocles and Anaxagoras; for they too produce other things from
their mixture by segregation. These differ, however, from each
other in that the former imagines a cycle of such changes, the
latter a single series. Anaxagoras again made both his
‘homceomerous’ substances and his contraries infinite in multitude,
whereas Empedocles posits only the so-called elements.
    The theory of Anaxagoras that the principles are infinite in
multitude was probably due to his acceptance of the common opinion
of the physicists that nothing comes into being from not-being. For
this is the reason why they use the phrase ‘all things were
together’ and the coming into being of such and such a kind of
thing is reduced to change of quality, while some spoke of
combination and separation. Moreover, the fact that the contraries
proceed from each other led them to the conclusion. The one, they
reasoned, must have already existed in the other; for since
everything that comes into being must arise either from what is or
from what is not, and it is impossible for it to arise from what is
not (on this point all the physicists agree), they thought that the
truth of the alternative necessarily followed, namely that things
come into being out of existent things, i.e. out of things already
present, but imperceptible to our senses because of the smallness
of their bulk. So they assert that everything has been mixed in
every. thing, because they saw everything arising out of
everything. But things, as they say, appear different from one
another and receive different names according to the nature of the
particles which are numerically predominant among the innumerable
constituents of the mixture. For nothing, they say, is purely and
entirely white or black or sweet, bone or flesh, but the nature of
a thing is held to be that of which it contains the most.
    Now (1) the infinite qua infinite is unknowable, so that what is
infinite in multitude or size is unknowable in quantity, and what
is infinite in variety of kind is unknowable in quality. But the
principles in question are infinite both in multitude and in kind.
Therefore it is impossible to know things which are composed of
them; for it is when we know the nature and quantity of its
components that we suppose we know a complex.
    Further (2) if the parts of a whole may be of any size in the
direction either of greatness or of smallness (by ‘parts’ I mean
components into which a whole can be divided and which are actually
present in it), it is necessary that the whole thing itself may be
of any size. Clearly, therefore, since it is impossible for an
animal or plant to be indefinitely big or small, neither can its
parts be such, or the whole will be the same. But flesh, bone, and
the like are the parts of animals, and the fruits are the parts of
plants. Hence it is obvious that neither flesh, bone, nor any such
thing can be of indefinite size in the direction either of the
greater or of the less.
    Again (3) according to the theory all such things are already
present in one another and do not come into being but are
constituents which are separated out, and a thing receives its
designation from its chief constituent. Further, anything may come
out of anything-water by segregation from flesh and flesh from
water. Hence, since every finite body is exhausted by the repeated
abstraction of a finite body, it seems obviously to follow that
everything cannot subsist in everything else. For let flesh be
extracted from water and again more flesh be produced from the
remainder by repeating the process of separation: then, even though
the quantity separated out will continually decrease, still it will
not fall below a certain magnitude. If, therefore, the process
comes to an end, everything will not be in everything else (for
there will be no flesh in the remaining water); if on the other
hand it does not, and further extraction is always possible, there
will be an infinite multitude of finite equal particles in a finite
quantity-which is impossible. Another proof may be added: Since
every body must diminish in size when something is taken from it,
and flesh is quantitatively definite in respect both of greatness
and smallness, it is clear that from the minimum quantity of flesh
no body can be separated out; for the flesh left would be less than
the minimum of flesh.
    Lastly (4) in each of his infinite bodies there would be already
present infinite flesh and blood