The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

which may of course be
generalized, as has already been said into excess and defect.
Indeed this doctrine too (that the One and excess and defect are
the principles of things) would appear to be of old standing,
though in different forms; for the early thinkers made the two the
active and the one the passive principle, whereas some of the more
recent maintain the reverse.
    To suppose then that the elements are three in number would
seem, from these and similar considerations, a plausible view, as I
said before. On the other hand, the view that they are more than
three in number would seem to be untenable.
    For the one substratum is sufficient to be acted on; but if we
have four contraries, there will be two contrarieties, and we shall
have to suppose an intermediate nature for each pair separately.
If, on the other hand, the contrarieties, being two, can generate
from each other, the second contrariety will be superfluous.
Moreover, it is impossible that there should be more than one
primary contrariety. For substance is a single genus of being, so
that the principles can differ only as prior and posterior, not in
genus; in a single genus there is always a single contrariety, all
the other contrarieties in it being held to be reducible to
one.
    It is clear then that the number of elements is neither one nor
more than two or three; but whether two or three is, as I said, a
question of considerable difficulty.
<
    div id="section7" class="section" title="7">
7
    We will now give our own account, approaching the question first
with reference to becoming in its widest sense: for we shall be
following the natural order of inquiry if we speak first of common
characteristics, and then investigate the characteristics of
special cases.
    We say that one thing comes to be from another thing, and one
sort of thing from another sort of thing, both in the case of
simple and of complex things. I mean the following. We can say (1)
‘man becomes musical’, (2) what is ‘not-musical becomes musical’,
or (3), the ‘not-musical man becomes a musical man’. Now what
becomes in (1) and (2)-’man’ and ‘not musical’-I call simple, and
what each becomes-’musical’-simple also. But when (3) we say the
‘not-musical man becomes a musical man’, both what becomes and what
it becomes are complex.
    As regards one of these simple ‘things that become’ we say not
only ‘this becomes so-and-so’, but also ‘from being this, comes to
be so-and-so’, as ‘from being not-musical comes to be musical’; as
regards the other we do not say this in all cases, as we do not say
(1) ‘from being a man he came to be musical’ but only ‘the man
became musical’.
    When a ‘simple’ thing is said to become something, in one case
(1) it survives through the process, in the other (2) it does not.
For man remains a man and is such even when he becomes musical,
whereas what is not musical or is unmusical does not continue to
exist, either simply or combined with the subject.
    These distinctions drawn, one can gather from surveying the
various cases of becoming in the way we are describing that, as we
say, there must always be an underlying something, namely that
which becomes, and that this, though always one numerically, in
form at least is not one. (By that I mean that it can be described
in different ways.) For ‘to be man’ is not the same as ‘to be
unmusical’. One part survives, the other does not: what is not an
opposite survives (for ‘man’ survives), but ‘not-musical’ or
‘unmusical’ does not survive, nor does the compound of the two,
namely ‘unmusical man’.
    We speak of ‘becoming that from this’ instead of ‘this becoming
that’ more in the case of what does not survive the
change-’becoming musical from unmusical’, not ‘from man’-but there
are exceptions, as we sometimes use the latter form of expression
even of what survives; we speak of ‘a statue coming to be from
bronze’, not of the ‘bronze becoming a statue’. The change,
however, from an opposite which does not survive is described
indifferently in both ways, ‘becoming that from this’ or ‘this
becoming that’. We say both that ‘the unmusical becomes musical’,
and that ‘from unmusical he becomes musical’. And so both forms are
used of the complex, ‘becoming a musical man from an unmusical
man’, and unmusical man becoming a musical man’.
    But there are different senses of ‘coming to be’. In some cases
we do