Probably in both
ways, as an army does; for its good is found both in its order and
in its leader, and more in the latter; for he does not depend on the
order but it depends on him. And all things are ordered together
somehow, but not all alike,-both fishes and fowls and plants; and
the world is not such that one thing has nothing to do with another,
but they are connected. For all are ordered together to one end, but
it is as in a house, where the freemen are least at liberty to act
at random, but all things or most things are already ordained for
them, while the slaves and the animals do little for the common
good, and for the most part live at random; for this is the sort of
principle that constitutes the nature of each. I mean, for instance,
that all must at least come to be dissolved into their elements, and
there are other functions similarly in which all share for the good of
the whole.
We must not fail to observe how many impossible or paradoxical
results confront those who hold different views from our own, and what
are the views of the subtler thinkers, and which views are attended by
fewest difficulties. All make all things out of contraries. But
neither 'all things' nor 'out of contraries' is right; nor do these
thinkers tell us how all the things in which the contraries are
present can be made out of the contraries; for contraries are not
affected by one another. Now for us this difficulty is solved
naturally by the fact that there is a third element. These thinkers
however make one of the two contraries matter; this is done for
instance by those who make the unequal matter for the equal, or the
many matter for the one.
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