Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/169

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Chapter VI.

Whenever cogitation is employed upon what may be indivisible it is not subject to error, but when engaged upon topics which involve both error and truth, there is a simultaneous combination of thoughts, whereby they are, so to say, individualized; in the way that Empedocles expressed himself, "Now the heads of many creatures budded forth without necks, and then, heads and necks were by affinity made one." It is thus that thoughts, however disconnected, as the incommensurable and the diameter, are by the intelligence joined together. If the question relate to things past or future, the mind, thinking upon time besides, adds it to the other conditions; for error lies ever in the combination, as when the white is said not to be white, the error is in the addition of the negative. Now, it is always in our power to speak of things individually; but then, it is not only true or false that Clem is fair, but equally so that he ever was or ever will be fair. It is the mind which individualizes each subject. But since the indivisible is in the twofold state either of potentiality or