Is Being One?

If Being is just one, and one in the way mentioned, there is a principle no longer, since a principle must be the principle of some thing or things.

To inquire therefore whether Being is one in this sense would be like:

• arguing against any other position maintained for the sake of argument, or
  • An example is the Heraclitean thesis, or such a thesis as that Being is one man
• refuting a merely contentious argument

Contentious arguments are those of Melissus and Parmenides.

• Their premisses are false
• Their conclusions do not follow

The argument of Melissus is gross, palpable, and offers no difficulty at all

• If you accept one ridiculous proposition, the rest follows – a simple enough proceeding.

We physicists, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion.

• This is made plain by induction.

Men of science are not supposed to solve every kind of difficulty.

• They only solve those that are drawn falsely from the principles of the science.

It is not our business to refute those that do not arise in this way.

Similarly, the geometer’s duty is to refute the squaring of the circle by means of segments.

• But it is not his duty to refute Antiphon’s proof.

Melissus and Parmenides incidentally raise physical questions even if Nature is not their subject.

The most pertinent question is: In what sense is it asserted that all things are one?

‘Is’ is used in many senses.

Do they mean that all things ‘are’ substance, quantities, or qualities?

Are all things one substance:

• one man
• one horse
• one soul

Or are they one quality?

Are they all the same white or hot?

These are all very different doctrines and all impossible to maintain.

If both substance, quantity ,and quality are the same, then whether these exist independently of each other or not, Being will be many.

If on the other hand it is asserted that all things are quality or quantity, then, whether substance exists or not, an absurdity results, if the impossible can properly be called absurd.

This is because none of the others can exist independently – substance alone is independent.

This in turn is because everything is predicated of substance as subject.

Melissus says that Being is infinite.

So Being is then a quantity.

For the infinite is in the category of quantity, whereas substance or quality or affection cannot be infinite except through a concomitant attribute, that is, if at the same time they are also quantities.

For to define the infinite you must use quantity in your formula, but not substance or quality.

If then Being is both substance and quantity, then it is two, not one.

If Being is only substance, then it is not infinite and has no magnitude, for to have that it will have to be a quantity.

Again, ‘one’ itself, no less than ‘being’, is used in many senses. We must consider in what sense the word is used when it is said that the All is one. This can be either:

• (a) the continuous is one or
• (b) the indivisible is one
• (c) things are said to be ‘one’, when their essence is one and the same, as ‘liquor’ and ‘drink’.

1. The One is Continuous

In this sense, the one is many, for the continuous is infinitely divisible.

There is a difficulty about part and whole.

Is the part and the whole one or more than one?

How can they be one or many?

If they are more than one, in what sense they are more than one?

Similarly, what about the parts of wholes which are not continuous?

If each of the two parts is indivisibly one with the whole, then they will be indivisibly one with each other also.

2. The One is indivisible.

In this sense, nothing will have quantity or quality. The One will:

• not be infinite, as Melissus says
• not limited, as Parmenides says

The limit is indivisible, but the limited is not.

3. ALl things are the same

This is simlar to ‘raiment’ and ‘dress’.

This maintains the Heraclitean doctrine.

It will be the same thing ‘to be good’ and ‘to be bad’, and ‘to be good’ and ‘to be not good’, and so the same thing will be ‘good’ and ‘not good’, and man and horse.

Their view will be, not that all things are one, but that they are nothing. ‘To be of such-andsuch a quality’ is the same as ‘to be of such-and-such a size’.

Even the more recent of the ancient thinkers were in a pother lest the same thing should turn out in their hands both one and many.

So some, like Lycophron, were led to omit ‘is’, others to change the mode of expression and say ‘the man has been whitened’ instead of ‘is white’, and ‘walks’ instead of ‘is walking’, for fear that if they added the word ‘is’ they should be making the one to be many-as if ‘one’ and ‘being’ were always used in one and the same sense.

What ‘is’ may be many either in definition (for example ‘to be white’ is one thing, ‘to be musical’ another, yet the same thing be both, so the one is many) or by division, as the whole and its parts.

On this point, they were already getting into difficulties. They admitted that the one was many-as if there was any difficulty about the same thing being both one and many, provided that these are not opposites; for ‘one’ may mean either ‘potentially one’ or ‘actually one’.