The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

  5 It is a difficult question, if one denies that a formula with an added determinant is a definition, (15) whether any of the terms that are not simple but coupled will be definable. For we must explain them by adding a determinant. e. g. there is the nose, and concavity, and snubness, which is compounded out of the two by the presence of the one in the other, and it is not by accident that the nose has the attribute either of concavity or of snubness, but in virtue of its nature; nor do they attach to it as whiteness does to Callias, (20) or to man (because Callias, who happens to be a man, is white), but as ‘male’ attaches to animal and ‘equal’ to quantity, and as all so-called ‘attributes propter se’ attach to their subjects. And such attributes are those in which is involved either the formula or the name of the subject of the particular attribute, (25) and which cannot be explained without this; e. g. white can be explained apart from man, but not female apart from animal. Therefore there is either no essence and definition of any of these things, or if there is, it is in another sense, as we have said.14

  But there is also a second difficulty about them. For if snub nose and concave nose are the same thing, snub and concave will be the same thing; but if snub and concave are not the same (because it is impossible to speak of snubness apart from the thing of which it is an attribute propter se, (30) for snubness is concavity-in-a-nose), either it is impossible to say ‘snub nose’ or the same thing will have been said twice, concave-nose nose; for snub nose will be concave-nose nose. And so it is absurd that such things should have an essence; if they have, (35) there will be an infinite regress; for in snub-nose nose yet another ‘nose’ will be involved.

  [1031a] Clearly, then, only substance is definable. For if the other categories also are definable, it must be by addition of a determinant, e. g. the qualitative is defined thus, and so is the odd, for it cannot be defined apart from number; nor can female be defined apart from animal. (When I say ‘by addition’ I mean the expressions in which it turns out that we are saying the same thing twice, as in these instances.) And if this is true, coupled terms also, like ‘odd number’, (5) will not be definable (but this escapes our notice because our formulae are not accurate). But if these also are definable, either it is in some other way or, as we said,15 definition and essence must be said to have more than one sense. Therefore in one sense nothing will have a definition and nothing will have an essence, (10) except substances, but in another sense other things will have them. Clearly, then, definition is the formula of the essence, and essence belongs to substances either alone or chiefly and primarily and in the unqualified sense.

  6 We must inquire whether each thing and its essence are the same or different. (15) This is of some use for the inquiry concerning substance; for each thing is thought to be not different from its substance, and the essence is said to be the substance of each thing.

  Now in the case of accidental unities the two would be generally thought to be different, e. g. white man would be thought to be different from the essence of white man. (20) For if they are the same, the essence of man and that of white man are also the same; for a man and a white man are the same thing, as people say, so that the essence of white man and that of man would be also the same. But perhaps it does not follow that the essence of accidental unities should be the same as that of the simple terms. For the extreme terms are not in the same way identical with the middle term. But perhaps this might be thought to follow, (25) that the extreme terms, the accidents, should turn out to be the same, e. g. the essence of white and that of musical; but this is not actually thought to be the case.

  But in the case of so-called self-subsistent things, is a thing necessarily the same as its essence? e. g. if there are some substances which have no other substances nor entities prior to them—substances such as some assert the Ideas to be?—If the essence of good is to be different from good-itself, (30) and the essence of animal from animal-itself, and the essence of being from being-itself, there will, firstly, be other substances and entities and Ideas besides those which are asserted, and, secondly, these others will be prior substances, if essence is substance. [1031b] And if the posterior substances and the prior are severed from each other, (a) there will be no knowledge of the former,16 and (b) the latter17 will have no being. (5) (By ‘severed’ I mean, if the good-itself has not the essence of good, and the latter has not the property of being good.) For (a) there is knowledge of each thing only when we know its essence. And (b) the case is the same for other things as for the good; so that if the essence of good is not good, neither is the essence of reality real, (10) nor the essence of unity one. And all essences alike exist or none of them does; so that if the essence of reality is not real, neither is any of the others. Again, that to which the essence of good does not belong18 is not good.—The good, then, must be one with the essence of good, and the beautiful with the essence of beauty, and so with all things which do not depend on something else but are self-subsistent and primary. For it is enough if they are this, even if they are not Forms; or rather, (15) perhaps, even if they are Forms. (At the same time it is clear that if there are Ideas such as some people say there are, it will not be substratum that is substance; for these must be substances, but not predicable of a substratum; for if they were they would exist only by being participated in.19)

  Each thing itself, then, and its essence are one and the same in no merely accidental way, as is evident both from the preceding arguments and because to know each thing, (20) at least, is just to know its essence, so that even by the exhibition of instances it becomes clear that both must be one.

  (But of an accidental term, e. g. ‘the musical’ or ‘the white’, since it has two meanings, it is not true to say that it itself is identical with its essence; for both that to which the accidental quality belongs, (25) and the accidental quality, are white, so that in a sense the accident and its essence are the same, and in a sense they are not; for the essence of white is not the same as the man20 or the white man, but it is the same as the attribute white.)

  The absurdity of the separation would appear also if one were to assign a name to each of the essences; for there would be yet another essence besides the original one, e. g. to the essence of horse there will belong a second essence.21 (30) Yet why should not some things be their essences from the start, since essence is substance? But indeed not only are a thing and its essence one, but the formula of them is also the same, as is clear even from what has been said; for it is not by accident that the essence of one, and the one, are one. [1032a] Further, if they are to be different, the process will go on to infinity; for we shall have (1) the essence of one, and (2) the one, so that to terms of the former kind the same argument will be applicable.22

  Clearly, then, each primary and self-subsistent thing is one and the same as its essence. (5) The sophistical objections to this position, and the question whether Socrates and to be Socrates are the same thing, are obviously answered by the same solution; for there is no difference either in the standpoint from which the question would be asked, or in that from which one could answer it successfully. We have explained, (10) then, in what sense each thing is the same as its essence and in what sense it is not.

  7 Of things that come to be, some come to be by nature, some by art, some spontaneously. Now everything that comes to be comes to be by the agency of something and from something and comes to be something. And the something which I say it comes to be may be found in any category; it may come to be either a ‘this’ or of some size or of some quality or somewhere.

  Now natural comings to be are the comings to be of those things which come to be by nature; and that out of which they come to be is what we call matter; and that by which they come to be is something which exists naturally; and the something which they come to be is a man or a plant or one of the things of this kind, (15) which we say are substances if anything is—all things produced either by nature or by art have matter; for each of them is capable both of being and of not being, (20) and t
his capacity is the matter in each—and, in general, both that from which they are produced is nature, and the type according to which they are produced is nature (for that which is produced, e. g. a plant or an animal, has a nature), and so is that by which they are produced—the so-called ‘formal’ nature, which is specifically the same (though this is in another individual); for man begets man. (25)

  Thus, then, are natural products produced; all other productions are called ‘makings’. And all makings proceed either from art or from a faculty or from thought.23 Some of them happen also spontaneously or by luck24 just as natural products sometimes do; for there also the same things sometimes are produced without seed as well as from seed. (30) Concerning these cases, then, we must inquire later,25 but from art proceed the things of which the form is in the soul of the artist. [1032b] (By form I mean the essence of each thing and its primary substance.) For even contraries have in a sense the same form; for the substance of a privation is the opposite substance, e. g. health is the substance of disease (for disease is the absence of health); and health is the formula in the soul or the knowledge of it. (5) The healthy subject is produced as the result of the following train of thought:—since this is health, if the subject is to be healthy this must first be present, e. g. a uniform state of body, and if this is to be present, there must be heat; and the physician goes on thinking thus until he reduces the matter to a final something which he himself can produce. Then the process from this point onward, (10) i. e. the process towards health, is called a ‘making’. Therefore it follows that in a sense health comes from health and house from house, that with matter from that without matter; for the medical art and the building art are the form of health and of the house, and when I speak of substance without matter I mean the essence.

  Of the productions or processes one part is called thinking and the other making—that which proceeds from the starting-point and the form is thinking, (15) and that which proceeds from the final step of the thinking is making. And each of the other, intermediate, things is produced in the same way. I mean, for instance, if the subject is to be healthy his bodily state must be made uniform. What then does being made uniform imply? This or that. And this depends on his being made warm. (20) What does this imply? Something else. And this something is present potentially; and what is present potentially is already in the physician’s power.

  The active principle then and the starting-point for the process of becoming healthy is, if it happens by art, the form in the soul, and if spontaneously, it is that, whatever it is, which starts the making,26 for the man who makes by art, as in healing the starting-point is perhaps the production of warmth (and this the physician produces by rubbing). (25) Warmth in the body, then, is either a part of health or is followed (either directly or through several intermediate steps) by something similar which is a part of health; and this, viz. that which produces the part of health, is the limiting-point27—and so too with a house (the stones are the limiting-point here) and in all other cases.

  Therefore, as the saying goes, it is impossible that anything should be produced if there were nothing existing before. (30) Obviously then some part of the result will pre-exist of necessity; for the matter is a part; for this is present in the process and it is this that becomes something. But is the matter an element even in the formula? We certainly describe in both ways28 what brazen circles are; we describe both the matter by saying it is brass, and the form by saying that it is such and such a figure; and figure is the proximate genus in which it is placed. [1033a] The brazen circle, then, has its matter in its formula.

  As for that out of which as matter they are produced, (5) some things are said, when they have been produced, to be not that but ‘thaten’; e. g. the statue is not gold but golden. And a healthy man is not said to be that from which he has come. The reason is that though a thing comes both from its privation and from its substratum, which we call its matter (e. g. what becomes healthy is both a man and an invalid), (10) it is said to come rather from its privation (e. g. it is from an invalid rather than from a man that a healthy subject is produced). And so the healthy subject is not said to be an invalid, but to be a man, and the man is said to be healthy. But as for the things whose privation is obscure and nameless, e. g. in brass the privation of a particular shape or in bricks and timber the privation of arrangement as a house, the thing is thought to be produced from these materials, (15) as in the former case the healthy man is produced from an invalid. And so, as there also a thing is not said to be that from which it comes, here the statue is not said to be wood but is said by a verbal change to be wooden, not brass but brazen, not gold but golden, and the house is said to be not bricks but bricken (though we should not say without qualification, (20) if we looked at the matter carefully, even that a statue is produced from wood or a house from bricks, because coming to be implies change in that from which a thing comes to be, and not permanence). It is for this reason, then, that we use this way of speaking.

  8 Since anything which is produced is produced by something (and this I call the starting-point of the production), (25) and from something (and let this be taken to be not the privation but the matter; for the meaning we attach to this has already29 been explained), and since something is produced (and this is either a sphere or a circle or whatever else it may chance to be), just as we do not make the substratum (the brass), so we do not make the sphere, except incidentally, (30) because the brazen sphere is a sphere and we make the former. For to make a ‘this’ is to make a ‘this’ out of the substratum in the full sense of the word.30 (I mean that to make the brass round is not to make the round or the sphere, but something else, i. e. to produce this form in something different from itself. For if we make the form, we must make it out of something else; for this was assumed.31 [1033b] e. g. we make a brazen sphere; and that in the sense that out of this, which is brass, we make this other, which is a sphere.) If, then, we also make the substratum itself, clearly we shall make it in the same way, and the processes of making will regress to infinity. (5) Obviously then the form also,32 or whatever we ought to call the shape present in the sensible thing, is not produced, nor is there any production of it, nor is the essence produced; for this is that which is made to be in something else either by art or by nature or by some faculty. But that there is a brazen sphere, this we make. (10) For we make it out of brass and the sphere; we bring the form into this particular matter, and the result is a brazen sphere. But if the essence of sphere in general is to be produced, something must be produced out of something. For the product will always have to be divisible, and one part must be this and another that; I mean the one must be matter and the other form. If, then, a sphere is ‘the figure whose circumference is at all points equidistant from the centre’, (15) part of this will be the medium in which the thing made will be, and part will be in that medium, and the whole will be the thing produced, which corresponds to the brazen sphere. It is obvious, then, from what has been said, that that which is spoken of as form or substance is not produced, but the concrete thing which gets its name from this is produced, and that in everything which is generated matter is present, and one part of the thing is matter and the other form.

  Is there, then, a sphere apart from the individual spheres or a house apart from the bricks? Rather we may say that no ‘this’ would ever have been coming to be, (20) if this had been so, but that the ‘form’ means the ‘such’, and is not a ‘this’—a definite thing; but the artist makes, or the father begets, a ‘such’ out of a ‘this’; and when it has been begotten, it is a ‘this such’.33 And the whole ‘this’, Callias or Socrates, is analogous to ‘this brazen sphere’, but man and animal to ‘brazen sphere’ in general. (25) Obviously, then, the cause which consists of the Forms (taken in the sense in which some maintain the existence of the Forms, i. e. if they are something apart from the individuals) is useless, at least with regard to comings-to-be and to substances; and the Forms need not, for this reason at least, be self
-subsistent substances. In some cases indeed it is even obvious that the begetter is of the same kind as the begotten (not, (30) however, the same nor one in number, but in form), i. e. in the case of natural products (for man begets man), unless something happens contrary to nature, e. g. the production of a mule by a horse. (And even these cases are similar; for that which would be found to be common to horse and ass, the genus next above them, has not received a name, but it would doubtless be both, in fact something like a mule.) [1034a] Obviously, therefore, it is quite unnecessary to set up a Form as a pattern (for we should have looked for Forms in these cases if in any; for these are substances if anything is so); the begetter is adequate to the making of the product and to the causing of the form in the matter. And when we have the whole, (5) such and such a form in this flesh and in these bones, this is Callias or Socrates; and they are different in virtue of their matter (for that is different), but the same in form; for their form is indivisible.