There are,
however, many people of whom these things are true, while the charge
in question is untrue. It happens like this also in real reasoning;
e.g. Melissus' argument, that the universe is eternal, assumes that
the universe has not come to be (for from what is not nothing could
possibly come to be) and that what has come to be has done so from a
first beginning. If, therefore, the universe has not come to be, it
has no first beginning, and is therefore eternal. But this does not
necessarily follow: for even if what has come to be always has a first
beginning, it does not also follow that what has a first beginning has
come to be; any more than it follows that if a man in a fever be
hot, a man who is hot must be in a fever.
The refutation which depends upon treating as cause what is not a
cause, occurs whenever what is not a cause is inserted in the
argument, as though the refutation depended upon it. This kind of
thing happens in arguments that reason ad impossible: for in these
we are bound to demolish one of the premisses. If, then, the false
cause be reckoned in among the questions that are necessary to
establish the resulting impossibility, it will often be thought that
the refutation depends upon it, e.g. in the proof that the 'soul'
and 'life' are not the same: for if coming-to-be be contrary to
perishing, then a particular form of perishing will have a
particular form of coming-to-be as its contrary: now death is a
particular form of perishing and is contrary to life: life, therefore,
is a coming to-be, and to live is to come-to-be.
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