The theologians seem to agree with some
thinkers of the present day, who answer the question in the
negative, and say that both the good and the beautiful appear in the
nature of things only when that nature has made some progress. (This
they do to avoid a real objection which confronts those who say, as
some do, that the one is a first principle. The objection arises not
from their ascribing goodness to the first principle as an
attribute, but from their making the one a principle-and a principle
in the sense of an element-and generating number from the one.) The
old poets agree with this inasmuch as they say that not those who
are first in time, e.g. Night and Heaven or Chaos or Ocean, reign
and rule, but Zeus. These poets, however, are led to speak thus only
because they think of the rulers of the world as changing; for those
of them who combine the two characters in that they do not use
mythical language throughout, e.g. Pherecydes and some others, make
the original generating agent the Best, and so do the Magi, and some
of the later sages also, e.g. both Empedocles and Anaxagoras, of
whom one made love an element, and the other made reason a
principle. Of those who maintain the existence of the unchangeable
substances some say the One itself is the good itself; but they
thought its substance lay mainly in its unity.
This, then, is the problem,-which of the two ways of speaking is
right. It would be strange if to that which is primary and eternal and
most self-sufficient this very quality--self-sufficiency and
self-maintenance--belongs primarily in some other way than as a
good.
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