1034 20. (1) Must the definition of a whole contain that of the parts? The definition of the circle does not contain that of the segments, but the definition of the syllable contains that of the letters ; why is this?
28. (2) If the parts are prior to the whole, the acute angle should be prior to the right angle, the finger to the man. Yet the wholes are prior both in definition and in power of independent existence.
32. (1) Really ‘part’ is equivocal. The parts of substance are matter and form, but in a sense only the elements of the form are parts of the thing.
1035°4. E.g. flesh is a part of snubness but not of hollowness ; bronze is a part of the whole statue but not of it as form (a name, like ‘statue’, may be applied to the form or to the thing as having form, but never to the bare matter).
g. This is why the case of the circle differs from that of the syllable (cf. 1034” 24). The letters are parts of the form of the syllable; the segments of the circle are matter on which form supervenes, though nearer the form than the bronze in a bronze circle is.
14. In a sense not all the letters are present in the definition of the syllable ; the letters in wax or in the air are only the sensible matter of the syllable. For the parts into which a whole is dissolved may be parts of the concrete whole but not of the form, and therefore not present in the definition.
25. Hence things which are composed of form and matter (e. g. the snub, the bronze circle) can be dissolved into their material parts ; immaterial things cannot be so dissolved.
gi. Thus the clay statue is dissolved into clay, and even the circle into its segments—i.e. the individual circle, not the circle in the abstract.
» 3. (2) To restate the matter, (2) parts which are parts of the definition and into which the definition is analysed are, at any rate some of them, prior to the whole definition ; but the definition of the
right angle is not analysed into that of the acute but we versa, for the acute angle is defined as ‘less than a right angle’.
9. So too with the circle and the semicircle, the man and his finger, The parts which are matter are posterior to the whole; the parts of the substance as defined are prior, at least some of them.
14. (a) Since the soul is the substance as defined (or form) of such and such a body (at least no part of the body can be properly defined apart from its function, which involves perception), so that (4) the parts of the soul are (all or some) prior to the concrete animal, while the body and its parts are posterior to the soul and are the constituents not of it but of the concrete whole,
22. therefore (c), while the bodily parts are prior in a sense to the concrete whole, in a sense they are not (for the finger in the proper sense cannot exist apart from the animal); while some bodily parts are neither prior nor posterior, viz. the supreme parts in which the essence immediately resides, e. g. the heart or the brain.
27. Things which are predicated universally of particulars (e.g. man) are not substance but a compound of this definition and this matter taken universally, while the individual comprises an ultimate individual portion of matter.
gi. (1) (Return to the first problem.) There are parts of the form, parts of the concrete thing, and parts of the matter; only the first are parts of the definition, which is of the universal.
10362 2. The concrete individual, whether sensible like a bronze circle or intelligible like a mathematical circle, is not definable but knowable by the aid of intuition or perception; when the circles have passed from actuality, it is not clear whether they exist or not, but they are described by the universal definition.
8. Their matter itself is unknowable. Matter is sensible and change- able, or else intelligible—viz. the matter which exists in sensibles not gua sensible, i. e. mathematical figures.
12. We have now treated of whole and part, priority and posteriority ; we must next answer question (2) (return to the second problem), whether the right angle, the circle, the animal, or their parts are prior. We answer by a distinction :
16. If ‘animal’ may mean the soul, ‘the circle’ circularity, ‘the right angle’ right-angleness, then while the whole in a sense is posterior to the parts in a sense, i.e. the bronze right angle or the right angle formed by particular lines is posterior to the parts in the definition and to the parts of the particular right angle, the immaterial right angle is posterior to the parts in the definition but prior to those of the particular ;
196 Commentary
24. but if the soul cannot be said to be the animal, even so some wholes are prior to their parts, others not, as has been said.
In this chapter Aristotle returns from the digression on generation which has occupied chs. 7-9, to continue, in-effect, the discussion of essence which occupied chs. 4-6. The chapter raises two main questions:
(1) Should the definition of a whole contain the definitions of the parts (1034? 20-28)?
(2) Are the parts prior to the whole (? 28-32) ?
The treatment of the two questions is interwoven: (1) is discussed
in > 32—1035> 3, 1035 31—1036 12, (2) in 1035 3-31, 1036
413-25.
103420. was 8é Adyos pwépyn Exer. A Adyos must contain at least two words (De /n/, 16> 26); it must mention a genus and at least one differentia.
31. The subject of Néyovra: is ‘the parts’, though in the next clause ‘the wholes’ are again the subject. Schwegler’s proposal to read ob doxet in ]. 30 does not mend matters, since then there is a change of subject in kai r@ etvar de dvev GAAHAwY wpdrepa, and further éxeivwy will not refer to the same things as éxeiva. (Schwegler is wrong in thinking that Alexander read od doxe?. At 502. 16 Alexander is paraphrasing the sense.) For a similar construction cf. M. 1077? 3 n.
kat TG elvan Sé dvev GAAHAwY mpdtepa. What Aristotle says is true enouch of the finger; the body can exist without it, while it cannot exist without the body—it ceases to be a finger, except in name. But he is careless in assuming that the position of the acute angle is similar ; it is not true that the right angle can exist without the acute angle and not the acute angle without the right angle. Take a finger away from a living body and you leave it still a living body; take an acute angle away from a right angle and it ceases to be a right angle. Aristotle distinguishes the two cases clearly enough in A. 27. His other point, that the definition of the acute angle presupposes that of the right angle and not vice versa, is of course correct.
33. ets pev... moody. For this rpdmos cf. A. 1023) 15.
10352 7. ‘ For the form or the thing as having form may be spoken of as the so-and-so (éxacrov), but the material element by itself should never be said to be the so-and-so,’ This is probably intended by Aristotle to justify him in speaking (in ll. 6, 7) of the form alone (as well as the concrete whole) as ‘the statue’, while he refuses to call the matter alone a ‘statue’.
11. Alexander is no doubt right in taking tod Aéyou as dependent on pépy, Not on oroixela (504. 5-8). For tot doyov rod eidovs cf. 1. 4.
12. éf js. With the manuscript reading ed’ ots, we have, very awkwardly, to suppose a comma after vAy. Jaeger is no doubt right in supposing ois to have come in by itacism (cf. apparatus crilicus to T. 1004% 20, A. 10249 23, Z, 1030>35). ed’ as is sufficiently con- firmed by 10357 5, 1036% 31, » 6.
13-14. éyyutépw... éyyévntat. In a bronze circle there are two
grades of matter, one more essential than the other. Strip off the sensible matter (bronze) and you are still left with intelligible matter (the spatial parts of the circle). Aristotle’s remark here anticipates the doctrine stated in 1036* 9.
16. 1a év 76 dept, letters spoken and propagated through the air; cf. De Sensu 446” 6.
20. 70 cvvoXoyr is not to be identified either with the sensible or with the individual. It is applicable (1) to the intelligible individual ees 3), (2) to the universal answering to a set of sensible individuals
1035» 29), (3) to the sensible individual ; in fact to anything that con- tains matter either universal or particular, either intelligible or sensible. One would suppose that, as the universal of a set of sensible individuals contains the universal of their sensible matters (1035> 29), the universal of a set of intelligible individuals would contain the universal of their intelligible matters and would thus be a fourth kind of oivodov. But Aristotle does not draw this inference, and treats ‘the circle’ not as corresponding to ‘man’ and differing from it only by containing intelligible instead of sensible matter, but rather as corresponding to ‘soul’, which he identifies with ‘ being a soul’, i.e. with the pure form of vitality (103671). The main importance of the chapter lies in the recognition of (1) the intelligible individual, and (2) the materiate universal or \dyos evvAos (De An. 403? 25), as intermediates between the sensible individual and the pure form or, as we may call it, Adyos avAos.
A consideration of, say, the circle leads to the recognition of five entities :
(a) the relation stated in the equation to the circle,
(3 this relation spatialized (the circle in general),
¢) this relation exemplified in a particular space—(1) above,
(d) this relation embodied in a certain type of matter—(2) above,
(e) this relation embodied in a particular portion of matter — (3) above.
Aristotle in effect here ignores (4) or identifies it with (a). And in 1036 7-20 he rejects the Platonic conception that the form of line is something non-spatial—the number 2. This goes with his insistence (in the Posterior Analytics) on a complete separation between arith- metic and geometry.
It is evident that Aristotle’s intelligible individuals answer to ra petagd of the Platonists (for which cf. A. 987>14n.). He attacks these (A. 991 29, B. 997° 14, K. 1059) 6, M. 10771, N. 10go? 36) without hinting that he himself held a similar doctrine. There is, however, an essential difference, in his opinion, between the two doctrines. He thinks, rightly or wrongly, that the Platonists regarded the intermediates as separately existing entities, while he himself thinks of them as existing in sensible things and separable only by definition (1036 11, M. 2, 3); his objection to ra peragv is the same as his fundamental objection to the Ideas. But it is noteworthy that he also attacks a doctrine of intermediates which, like his own, conceived of them as existing zw sensible things (B. 9984 7). This doctrine too, he
198 Commentary
would doubtless say, regards the intermediates as substances, while he regards them merely as characters of substances.
21-23. Neither the text of EJ nor that of AP in these lines can be accepted, and an early corruption is clearly indicated. The singular 7 in 1. 23 indicates that Adyos has been spokenof in the singular, and TO pey...7@ 0 was probably the original reading. This was corrupted into tov pev...7dv 8, and the reading of AP implies an attempt to amend the whole reading thus produced.
23. av ph 770d cuverAnppevou. Jaeger (anticipated by Christ) thinks this a gloss, (1) because in his view, whether we understand these words as meaning ‘ unless the parts are parts of the concrete thing’ or ‘unless the definition is the definition of the concrete thing’, they destroy the sense, and (2) because he thinks 7d cuverAnppevoy could not be thus used without any explanation, not having occurred before in Z The words occur, however, in all the manuscripts and in Alexander and are defensible, though not necessary. (1) They state the condition under which the parts should not be mentioned in the definition of the whole. ‘But in another kind of definition the definition of such parts should not be present, viz. if the definition is not the definition of the concrete whole.’ (2) cvveAnpperov peta THs tAys has occurred already in E. 1025) 32; further, ocvverAnpupévov is explained presently, in 1. 25. —
29. 7 ddws 7 ovToL oTw ye. Forms are not destroyed by dismember- ment but are eternal or else cease instantaneously to be (H. 1043” 14). For these two alternatives cf. 1033 5-6 n.