A, 3. 186ᵇ 6—34.

This page continues the technical analysis of the definition of "being" and "accidents," referencing the scholarly debates of his time regarding the nature of substances and properties.

The text here addresses the difficulty of predication: if a substance (what-is) is identified with an attribute (like white), then either the attribute must be the substance itself, or the substance would be lost to non-being.

Some gave in to both arguments: to the first, that all things are one if "being" signifies one thing, because "non-being" must exist; and to the second, from the dichotomy, by making magnitudes indivisible. It is also clear that it is not true that if "being" signifies one thing and contradiction is not possible at the same time, there will be no non-being; for nothing prevents "non-being" from existing not in an absolute sense, but as "being something that is not." To say that, apart from "being" itself, if there is not something else, all things will be one, is absurd. For who learns "being" itself unless it is "to be something that is"? If this is the case, nothing prevents there being many things, as has been said. That it is impossible for "being" to be one in this way is clear.

As for the natural philosophers, there are two ways. Some, having made "being" into one underlying body—either one of the three referring to the primary elements like fire, water, or air or another which is denser than fire but thinner than air—generate other things by density and rarity, making many things. These are contraries, and in general, they are excess and deficiency, just as Plato says of the "great and small," except that he makes these matter and the "one" the form, while they make the "one" the underlying matter and the contraries the differences and forms. Others say that the contraries are secreted from the "one," as Anaximander says, and all those who say that existing things are both one and many, like Empedocles and Anaxagoras; for these also secrete other things from the mixture. They differ from each other in that one makes the cycle of these things, while the other makes it a one-time event; and one makes the homoeomeries parts similar to the whole and the contraries infinite, while the other makes only the so-called elements the fundamental constituents of matter. Anaxagoras seems to have thought they were infinite because he assumed the common opinion of the natural philosophers to be true, that nothing comes to be from non-being; for this is why they speak this way, saying "all things were together," and coming to be is simply a change in quality.