It is rather hard on the Platonists to attack them for treating the essential substance of things as an ageregate, if (as seems to be the case) the doctrine of inaddible numbers was meant just to avoid this implication. But Aristotle does not seem to understand the ‘ inaddible numbers’. Cf..M. 6, 7 nn.
1044-2. kal tov dpOpdv Sei eivai Tr @ ets. Bz. proposes 7G dpiO ue for rov apiOyov, but Aristotle means not that number must ave, but that it
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must de, a principle of unity, just as in general he identifies substance with the unifying principle.
8-9. Ad odx... éxdoty: | Cf. 104334 n. Aristotle here opposes his view of essence as an ‘actuality and nature’ which holds together material parts to the view that it is a mere indivisible unit.
Q-10. domep o8Sé 6 AptOuss ... Arrov. Ie. a number cannot be more or less a particular number ; it either definitely is it or definitely is not it.
11. AN’ elrep, } peTd THs Odys. In Cas 3>33—429 Aristotle implies that not even 4 peta rhs tAys, the concrete individual, can be more or less the substance it is.
II-13. epi pév ody yevéoews . . . Advvarov refers to 1043 14-23, Tept Tis eis Tov dpiOudy avaywyis to 1043>32—1044* 11. These, then, are for Aristotle the main sections of the chapter.
The various causes of generable natural substances, elernal natural substances, and natural events (ch. 4).
1044°15. Even if all things have the same ultimate matter, they have different proximate matter.
20. The same thing has more than one matter. Phlegm comes (1) (a) from what is fat, directly, (2) from the sweet, because the fat comes from the sweet, (2) from bile, by the resolution of bile into prime matter.
25. From the same matter different moving causes can sometimes produce different things ; in other cases different things involve different matter. If the same thing can come from different matters, the moving cause must be the same.
32. When we look for the cause of a thing, we must state all the causes we can—material, efficient, formal, final (the last two being ~ perhaps the same), taking care to get the proximate cause.
bg. So much for generable natural substances. The case of eternal natural substances is different ; some things presumably have no matter, or only the matter which qualifies things for spatial movement.
8. In natural things that are not substances there is no matter; the substance is their substratum. There is no matter of eclipse; the moon is what suffers it; the efficient cause is the earth; there is presumably no final cause. The formal cause is the definition, but this is obscure unless it states the efficient cause, as does the definition ‘ deprivation of light by the interposition of the earth’.
15. The importance of getting the proxzmate cause may be illus- trated by the causes of sleep.
1044° 16. ék tod attod mdyta mpdrou, i.e. from prime matter; 4 Tav avTav &s mpdtwy, i.e. from the four elements.
22. et 76 Aimapdv ék tod yhuxeos, cf. De An. 42212, De Sensu 442° 17, 23.
33-34. mdcas .. . Tas évdexopnevas airias, i.e. all the causes we can state.
35. dpa ta katapynna; Cf. G. A. 727? 31, 729 30.
Gpa to oméppa; Cf. 7292 28.
DT, tows S€ Taira dpow 16 adtd, Cf. De Gen. e¢ Corr. 335» 6.
6. tay uoikay pev didlwy S€ odcrdy, i.e. the celestial spheres and the stars.
Q. oK €ott TovTous UAn kTA. What underlies an: accident, as matter underlies substance, is not matter but substance. Cf. Z. 1038) 5.
12. 70 8 of évexa iows od éotiwv. This is a serious admission, in view of Aristotle’s identification in ]. 1 of the formal with the final cause. His teleology is in fact not complete. There is not always a final cause. But where there is, it is the formal cause as well. In the absence of a final cause, the thing is defined by reference to its efficient cause, as in ll. 14,15. Eclipse is for Aristotle an example of tattopatov. ‘The sun’s motion is no doubt évexa tov and so is that of the moon, but the two acting together may produce a result which is not evexa Tov.
16. GAN Gre 7d Loov; vai, &AAd KTA. is very like ]. 19 ore dxuwyoia Toadt ; vat, dAN xrA. The first adda is natural enough in introducing a suggested answer. Cf. L. and S. s.v. 1. 1, Kiihner ii, 2. § 589. 9. The manuscript reading ddd’ 67 is therefore preferable to Bz.’s con- jecture aAAo zz (‘Is it anything other than the animal?’), a phrase which does not seem to occur in Aristotle.
17. kapdta, Sleep is a wafos tov Kupiov TOv GAAwy Tavtwy aicOyTy- plov (De Somno 455 20-26, 33, »10, 458% 28), which is the heart (4568 4) or, in bloodless animals, what is analogous to it (456% 11). Elsewhere Aristotle connects sleep especially with the brain (P..A. 653% 10). A definition quoted thus by way of illustration is not necessarily his own; e.g. in similar contexts (dz. Post. 938, 944) he cites Anaxagoras’ definition of thunder, though his own was different (Meteor. 369% 10 —370* 33). Cf. ©. 1049820.
Only things subject to generation and change have matter. The relations between matter and its contrary states (ch. 5).
1044» 21. Since points, and in general forms, are and are not, without generation and destruction (for white does not come to be but wood comes to be white), not all contraries come to be out of one another (pale man from dark man but not pale from dark); nor have all things matter, but only the things liable to generation and reciprocal transformation.
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29. How is matter related to its contrary states? Is a body potentially diseased as well as potentially healthy, water potentially vinegar as well as potentially wine? It is the matter of the one in virtue of a positive state or form, of the other in virtue of the privation of the form. + 1
34. Again, why is not wine ‘potentially vinegar’, the living man ‘potentially dead’? These corruptions are incidental; the matter of the living man is by force of corruption potentially a dead man, and water (the matter of wine) potentially vinegar. Where, as here, opposites change into one another, the negative (e.g. dead body, vinegar) must be resolved into its matter before it can change into its positive.
1044) 21. éva dvev yevésews Kat pOopas eorr Kal ov €or, cf. BH. 10274 29n., Z. 1033 5-6 n.
22. otov at ortypat, cf. B. 10028 32, . WV. 1174) 12.
eimep eiot, ‘if they may be said to exist’. The Pythagoreans and Platonists thought they existed as substances, but Aristotle insists that they are merely romai, diatpécers, répara of lines (K. 1060? 12 ff., N. 10go? 5 ff.).
25. &\X’ érépws wth. A black thing (1) can become a white thing, and (2) does so bya process, by one part after another becoming white (Phys. vi. 4). But (1) black does not become white—all that we can say is that there was black and there zs white; and (2) white succeeds black instantaneously. When Aristotle says that contraries do not change into one another (A. 1069” 6), he is using évayriov in only one (the more fundamental!) of the two senses here referred to, i.e. of the contrary qualities, not of the things characterized by those qualities. In the work Iept évavriwy (fr. 119 Rose) he distinguished the two kinds of contraries as 7a Ka@ atrd evavria and 7a TO peréxew évavtiwv évavria. Cf. I. 1057 6.
34. dmopia 8€ ts €or. Aristotle’s answer to the question is that wine is not the matter of vinegar but the normal product of the same matter of which vinegar is the abnormal product. In sucha case there is no direct transition from the normal to the abnormal product nor vice versa; the given product must first be reduced to its constituent matter.
This is stated explicitly of the change from the abnormal to the normal product (1045* 4-6), and implied with regard to the converse change (1044> 34—104538 2).
36. card cupBeBnkds at POopat, i.e. the degeneration into vinegar does not attach to the wine directly, but to the water of which the wine is a particular form. Thus the chapter indicates three ways in which A may change into B:
(1) xa? e£w kal xara 76 e@Sos, as water into wine,
(2) kata orépnow Kal POopay tiv tapa pvow, as water into vinegar,
(3) Kara cvpPB_eByxos, as wine into vinegar, or vinegar into wine. 1045* 3. ék tovtwy, sc. ex Lwov, é& olvov. As wine and vinegar have a common matter, water, so day and night have a common sub- stratum, air (A. 1070? 21).
The unity of definition (ch. 6).
104577. We return to the question (cf. 104423) what makes a definition or a number one. All wholes as opposed to mere aggre- gates must have a cause of unity, which in bodies is contact, viscidity, &e.
12. A definition is one not by external union but by being the definition of one object. What, then, makes man one, not animal + two-footed? In particular, if there are Ideas of animal and two- footed, why do not men exist by participation in these two rather than in one Idea? +
20. The usual modes of definition afford no answer to the question, but the distinction of form and matter does.
25. The difficulty is the same as that of the unity of ‘round bronze’, if this be the definition of some term, It is one simply because bronze is matter and round is form. ‘There is no cause of the actual coming to be of what was potentially, save the efficient cause, in the case of things subject to becoming. It is the essence of the potential sphere to become actual, of the actual to have been potential.
33. Matter may be either sensible, or intelligible ; in a definition there is always an element of matter as well as one of actuality (e, g, ‘plane figure’ in the definition of circle).
36. Things that have not matter of either kind, i.e. the categories, are directly and essentially some kind of one as they are some kind of being ; hence their existence and their oneness are not stated in their definitions. ‘Their essence is directly a one as it is an existent ; hence there is no other cause of their unity or of their existence ; for each is directly an existent and a one, though being and unity are not their genera and do not exist apart from the particular kinds of being and unity.
b 4, Some solve the problem of unity by ‘ participation’, which they cannot explain or define; others by ‘intercourse’ (so Lycophron), ‘ composition ’, ‘ connexion ’—formulae that can be applied to anything whatever.
16. Their mistake is that they look for a difference between, and a unifying formula for, potentiality and actuality, while really the proxi-
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mate matter and the form are one, the first being potentially what the second is actually, so that there is no reason of their unity except that which causes the movement from potentiality to actuality; while immaterial things are without qualification and essentially unities,
10452 7. THs elpnwevys, Z. 12, H. 10442 2-6.
8. kal mept tos dpiOuous. The chapter in fact discusses only the unity of definitions.
25. gott yap alt ¥ dwopta «tk. The problem is that of the unity of genus or vAy vont with differentia. Aristotle illustrates it by. the more familiar notion of the unity of form with vAy aicOyrn in e.g. a bronze ball, and then in |]. 33 returns to the case of genus and differentia, and points out that genus is to differentia as sensible matter to form and may therefore be called intelligible matter.
26. For iudérwv taken thus arbitrarily cf De Int, 18°19, Z. 1029? 28.
33. éxarépw may mean (1) ‘for the potential ball and for the poten- tial man’ (I. 18) (this is Alexander's second interpretation, 562. 10); or (2) ‘it was the essence of the potential ball to become an actual ball, and of the actual ball to be produced from a potential ball’. This is the more probable interpretation ; the reference to the case of man occurs too far back to be referred to here as Alexander suggests.
34. tA vonry means here the generic element in a species. For this use of $An (without the adjective) cf. 23, A. 1024" 9, Z. 1038 6, I. 10584 23. tA vonry occurs in (apparently) a different sense in Z. 1036* g, where see note.
35. oXipa énimedov. The interest here being in matter, Aristotle states only the material or generic element in the definition of circle.