Nor have the Forms any connexion with what we see to be the
cause in the case of the arts, that for whose sake both all mind and
the whole of nature are operative,-with this cause which we assert
to be one of the first principles; but mathematics has come to be
identical with philosophy for modern thinkers, though they say that it
should be studied for the sake of other things. Further, one might
suppose that the substance which according to them underlies as matter
is too mathematical, and is a predicate and differentia of the
substance, ie. of the matter, rather than matter itself; i.e. the
great and the small are like the rare and the dense which the physical
philosophers speak of, calling these the primary differentiae of the
substratum; for these are a kind of excess and defect. And regarding
movement, if the great and the small are to he movement, evidently the
Forms will be moved; but if they are not to be movement, whence did
movement come? The whole study of nature has been annihilated.
And what is thought to be easy-to show that all things are
one-is not done; for what is proved by the method of setting out
instances is not that all things are one but that there is a One
itself,-if we grant all the assumptions. And not even this follows, if
we do not grant that the universal is a genus; and this in some
cases it cannot be.
Nor can it be explained either how the lines and planes and solids
that come after the numbers exist or can exist, or what significance
they have; for these can neither be Forms (for they are not
numbers), nor the intermediates (for those are the objects of
mathematics), nor the perishable things.
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