Physics

...or many, and how they are one or many, and if many, how they are many, and concerning the parts that are not continuous; and if each is one to the whole as an indivisible unit, that they are also such to themselves. But if it is as an indivisible unit, then being will be neither quantity nor quality, nor indeed will being be infinite, as Melissus says, nor finite, as Parmenides says; for the limit is indivisible, not the finite. But if beings are all one in definition, as a garment and a cloak, then it follows that they speak the argument of Heraclitus; for it will be the same thing to be good and evil, and to be good and not good, so that the same thing will be good and not good, and man and horse; and the argument will not be for them about being one, but about there being nothing, and that being such and such is the same as being of a certain size. The later thinkers among the ancients were also disturbed, lest the same thing should happen to them, that the same thing is both one and many. Wherefore, some removed the "is," like Lycophron, and others altered the expression, that the man is not white but has been whitened, nor is he walking but walks, so that they might not, by adding the "is," make the one many, as if "one" or "being" were said in only one way. But beings are many, either by definition (for example, the being of white and the being of musical are different, yet the same subject is both; therefore the one is many) or by division, as the whole and the parts. Here they were already puzzled and admitted that the one is many, as if it were impossible for the same thing to be both one and many, though not as opposites; for the one exists both potentially and actually.

Therefore, proceeding in this manner, it appears impossible for beings to be one, and it is not difficult to solve the arguments from which they demonstrate it. For both Melissus and Parmenides argue sophistically; for they assume false premises and their arguments are not syllogistic; Melissus's argument is more...