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(14) A question connected with these is whether numbers and bodies
and planes and points are substances of a kind, or not. If they are
not, it baffles us to say what being is and what the substances of
things are. For modifications and movements and relations and
dispositions and ratios do not seem to indicate the substance of
anything; for all are predicated of a subject, and none is a 'this'.
And as to the things which might seem most of all to indicate
substance, water and earth and fire and air, of which composite bodies
consist, heat and cold and the like are modifications of these, not
substances, and the body which is thus modified alone persists as
something real and as a substance. But, on the other hand, the body is
surely less of a substance than the surface, and the surface than
the line, and the line than the unit and the point. For the body is
bounded by these; and they are thought to be capable of existing
without body, but body incapable of existing without these. This is
why, while most of the philosophers and the earlier among them thought
that substance and being were identical with body, and that all
other things were modifications of this, so that the first
principles of the bodies were the first principles of being, the
more recent and those who were held to be wiser thought numbers were
the first principles. As we said, then, if these are not substance,
there is no substance and no being at all; for the accidents of
these it cannot be right to call beings.
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