6. kai tod é& dudotv. The evidence is pretty equally divided between rod and ro, but the former gives a better sense, If Ais prior to B it is clear that it is prior to A+B, but it is not soclear that A+B is prior to B, which is what ro would imply. Further, while it is true that in 1. 29 Aristotle says the concrete unity is substance more truly than matter, he says nothing of its logical priority; but in |. 31 he says that form is prior to the concrete unity ; this again confirms od.
10. adTd... TodTo, i. e. the vague statement (riz elpyra) in |. 8 f.
12-16. Aristotle divides the process of ‘stripping off’ (epraipoupevwr) into two stages. 7a adAAa, the elements in the nature of a sensible thing other than length, breadth, and depth (i.e. the secondary qualities), are mere affections, actions, and powers of bodies. But secondly, length, breadth, and depth are themselves not substances but qualities and may be ‘ stripped away’ in thought.
22-23. @ 16 elvat. .. éxdoty. The being of matter is different from that of any of the categories, because, while matter is not pre- dicated of anything, substance is predicated of matter and the other categories are predicated of substance. It is noteworthy that even in working out the line of thought from which it might be inferred that matter is substance, Aristotle implies (in airy 8 rs tAns) that substance is something other than matter, something not entirely stripped of attributes but including certain attributes.
25. o0d€ 3% at dmoddoets, ‘ nor will the ultimate subject fer se be the negations of these’,i.e. ov ri, od rocoy, &c. This is difficult; one would suppose that it was just the essence of matter, as Aristotle conceives it, to be not ri, not zocov, &c. But he seems here to feel that to say even this of it is to assign it a character, while its character is to have no character.
27. Aristotle does not criticize the line of thought according to which matter is substance, precisely in the way which might seem most natural, by pointing out that the effort to find the truest reality in that of which attributes are predicated has left us with that of which nothing can be predicated. He puts the case differently. Matter lacks two of the characteristic marks of substance. It is not capable of separate existence, and it is not individual. It fails in both respects, we may say, because it is characterless.
29. In what sense are separate existence and individuality moré. characteristic of form than of matter (that they are more characteristic of the concrete individual than of matter is intelligible enough) ?
166 Commentary
A similar remark about form occurs in A. 1017> 25, and the note on that passage may be referred to.
BI. borépa, cf. 1. 6 n,
32. SHAn, ‘obvious to sense’.
davepd S€ mws kal 4 Udy, ie. TH dvadoyia avepd, as Alexander says. Cf. Phys. 191% 4-11 9 0 troxepevyn pvows emiotnT) Kar’ dvadoytay. &s yap mpos avdpidvta xaAkds ... OUTWS atin mpos odeiav é Ele i 33-34. Bonitz translates ‘Es wird nun aber allgemein anerkannt, dass es gewisse Wesenheiten der sinnlichen Dinge giebt’. But it seems more likely that otcvéy should be understood with ray aicby- tov, to account for the feminine rwés, and that ova/a: is predicate,
» 3-12, Bz. has pointed out that (1) Il. 1, 2 do not naturally lead up to Il. 3-12, since the ri jv eivar is far from being yvpimov nptv, and (2) ll. 3-12 do not naturally lead up to ll. 13 ff., since then there is nothing in what immediately precedes xat rp@rov xrA, |. 13 for avrod to referto, It plainly refers to the ri jy etvar, which has not been mentioned since |]. 2. His suggestion that 3 zpd épyov.. . 12 atrév should be placed after ® 34 zpérov meets both these difficulties. This section is meant to justify the treatment of form as it exists in sensible things (# 34) before passing to pure self-existent form. Jaeger suggests with much probability (Ar7s4. 205 n.) that the whole section, with the preceding sentence, was a note added later by Aristotle; the first sentence of the note was written between the lines of Aristotle’s manu- script and therefore appears in its proper place, but the remainder of the note had to be written on a separate sheet and has therefore been misplaced. Jaeger holds that the section belongs to a later period, when Aristotle first began to view the discussion of sensible substance in Z as preliminary to the discussion of insensible substance in A. Cf. 1037% 10-20 n.
5. dowep év tats mpdgeor. The passage is to some extent explained by £. V. 1129) 5, where we learn that we should choose what is good for us (i.e. what aids ws towards the good life) and pray that what is good in itself (i.e. external goods) may be good for us. Here he simply says ‘make’ instead of ‘pray ’. Originally, owing to some defect in us, what is good in itself may not be good for us; but we must (starting by choosing the things that are good for us) transform ourselves till this is no longer so. So too what is intelligible in itself is originally not intelligible to us; but we must clarify our minds until it 7s intelligible to us, by starting with the apprehension of what is already intelligible to us.
SUBSTANCE AS ESSENCE (chs. 4-6). What things have essence P (ch. 4).
* 10291. (A) We proceed to study essence,
13. (1) in the abstract. The essence of a thing is what it is said to
be per se (e.g. (a) your essence is not to-be-musical).
16. But not all of this ; e.g. (4) the essence of surface is not white- ness ; nor (¢) to be a white surface, for here ‘ surface’ itself is added improperly in the definition. The account of the essence of a thing is the account that states its nature but does not use its name.
22. (d) There are compounds of substance and another category ; is there an account of the essence of each such compound? Have they an essence?
27. E.g. has ‘white man’ an essence? It might be objected ‘that ‘essence of white man’ is not a thing that exists per se. But a proposed definition can be ‘not per se’ to its subject only (i) because of an improper addition (thus whiteness must not be defined by giving the account of ‘ white man’),
33. or (ii) because the subject has a qualification which is omitted in the definition (e. g. ‘white man’ must not be defined by giving the account of whiteness).
1030? 2. But is ‘being a white man’ an essence at all? No, for an essence is ‘just what something is’, but where one thing is asserted of another, as in ‘ white man’, this is not ‘just what something is ’, since it is not a substance. Only those things have an essence whose account is a definition.
7. It is not a definition if we merely have an account which means the same as a name (for then all accounts would be definitions, since any might have a name put to it), but only if it is the account of a primary real, i.e. of one which does not imply the assertion of something about something else.
11. Thus only a species has an essence or definition (for in a species, and only in a species, one element does not belong to the other by mere participation or by accident); but there can be an account of the meaning of azy name (saying that ‘this belongs to that’), or an accurate account can be given instead of a vague one.
17. Or perhaps definition has more than one sense, just as ‘what a thing is’ means now substance, now one of the other categories. ‘What a thing is’, like ‘is’ itself, belongs primarily to substance, secondarily to the others.
23. For we may ask even of a quality what it is; just as not-being is, in so far ag it is not-being, so quality is in a sense a ‘ what it is’.
27. (2) Since the proper way of using the term essence is now clear, we may say that in fact essence belongs (a) primarily to substance, (4) secondarily to the other categories, being in their case ‘the essence of a quality’, &c.
g2. The other categories are said to ‘be’ by an equivocation or with a qualification ; or rather, they ‘are’ neither in the same sense as
168 Commentary
substance nor in a merely equivocal sense, but just as various things are ‘medical’ by virtue of relation to a single end.
b 4. Definition and essence, then, are primarily of substance, secondly of the other categories.
7. But there is definition only if there isaname meaning the same as an account which is one in one of the senses of ‘one’ answering to the senses of ‘being ’, viz. to the categories.
12. Hence (c) there is a definition of ‘ white man’, but in a different sense of definition from that in which there is one of ‘white’ or of a substance.
1O2gP1. év dpyy, 1028» 33.
13. Aoyukds suggests plausibility rather than truth (Zop. 162» 27), dialectic or sophistic as opposed to science (Az. Post. 93% 15, and cf. I, 1005 22, N. 1087) 20 with De Jnt. 17% 36), a reference to abstract considerations (Adyor) rather than to the precise nature of the facts in question [ )(dvotxds, dvadutixds, éx Td oikeiwy apxdv, Phys. 2044, 10, De Gen. e¢ Corr. 316*11, G.A. 747 28, 74828, and cf, A. 10692 28 with éy tots Adyous A. 987> 31, ©. 1050 35]. Usually its sense is depreciatory, but where abstract arguments are those that are required AoyiKds may = dxpiBys, M. 1o80%10, It probably always refers to linguistic inquiries or considerations, cf. AoyiKds here and in 1030 25 with 10308 27-28 n. It is in 1030% 28 that the real as opposed to the verbal inquiry begins.
14. There is no other case in Aristotle of the accusative with ri jv eivar (in A. 1016* 34 ri Hv etvas is probably a gloss, cf. n. ad loc.), so that the manuscript reading éxacrov 0 Aeyerau will not stand (unless, which is unlikely, the meaning is ‘the ri jy evar is each thing, viz. what it is said per se to be’, or ‘the ri jv ecivac is what each thing is said per se to be’). éxaorov 6 A€yerau is palaeographically better than Bz.’s éxdoTw 0 déyerar. For the genitive cf. 10324 3, > 2.
16. o08¢€ 8% tTodto way. Aristotle rules out, as not the ri éorm of A, a term B which is xa atré to A in the second sense recognized in An. Post. (73 37), viz. that (1) it evyrdpye in A, is an attribute of A, and (2) A évumdpyxe in the definition of it. For this sense and the instance cf, A. 1022%30. He thus in effect implies that the r/ nv etvat Of A is that which is xa6’ adré to it in the firs? sense (73 34), viz. that it is present in the ri éove and definition of A.
Ig. St. mpdceoti adrd, i.e. such a statement of the essence of surface as ‘to be a white surface’ is wrong because it is tauto- logous.
21-22. dot ei... ev, ‘so that if to be a white surface is to be a smooth surface, then, though we are not told the essence of surface, it is implied that “to be white” and ‘to be smooth” are identical’. Aristotle is thinking of Democritus, who identified them (De Sensu 442? 11, Theophr. De Sensu 13, cf. De Gen. et Corr. 316* 1).
22-23. éwet 8 ott... ouvOera. There are oivGera or civoda, not only within the category of substance (@5, A. 102331) but also corresponding to the other categories, i.e. not only combinations of matter and form but also (more complicated) combinations of substance and accidental attribute. In fact every term in any category other than substance presupposes an underlying substance in which it inheres.
25. 1 kwyoe. The mention of this among the categories is unusual, but cf. “£. £. 1217629, where xuwetoOo, kwely occur as categories. xivyows is a synonym for zovety and racyew (cf. Top. 120 26); it occurs in less formal lists of categories in I. 1054%6, A. 10718 2. More strictly, xivnows is said to occur in the categories of substance, quality, quantity, place (PAys. 261% 27-36, De Gen. ef Corr. 315° 28 sqq.).
27. The omission of efyac with tt qv is unparalleled in Aristotle, and it is probable that the bracketed words are a gloss.