And similarly if one jumps over to past events, the same
account will hold good; for this-I mean the past condition-is
already present in something. Everything, therefore, that will be,
will be of necessity; e.g. it is necessary that he who lives shall one
day die; for already some condition has come into existence, e.g.
the presence of contraries in the same body. But whether he is to
die by disease or by violence is not yet determined, but depends on
the happening of something else. Clearly then the process goes back to
a certain starting-point, but this no longer points to something
further. This then will be the starting-point for the fortuitous,
and will have nothing else as cause of its coming to be. But to what
sort of starting-point and what sort of cause we thus refer the
fortuitous-whether to matter or to the purpose or to the motive power,
must be carefully considered.
4
Let us dismiss accidental being; for we have sufficiently
determined its nature. But since that which is in the sense of being
true, or is not in the sense of being false, depends on combination
and separation, and truth and falsity together depend on the
allocation of a pair of contradictory judgements (for the true
judgement affirms where the subject and predicate really are combined,
and denies where they are separated, while the false judgement has the
opposite of this allocation; it is another question, how it happens
that we think things together or apart; by 'together' and 'apart' I
mean thinking them so that there is no succession in the thoughts
but they become a unity); for falsity and truth are not in things-it
is not as if the good were true, and the bad were in itself
false-but in thought; while with regard to simple concepts and 'whats'
falsity and truth do not exist even in thought--this being so, we must
consider later what has to be discussed with regard to that which is
or is not in this sense.
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